Leafy intro

Welcome to the 270th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal ("NLJ") and its short-form writing sister publication, The Emu Café Social ("ECS"). This newsletter comes to you as always from the administrator, editor, and writer of both publications, Nicholas A. Ferrell.

My publishing output was less impressive in terms of word-count this just-completed Newsletter week than the previous one, but I still have plenty to share in this 270th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal.

Leaves from the week that was

I published three new NLJ articles since mailing Newsletter 269, all of which were snow-photo focused.

After mailing Newsletter 269 last Saturday, I published Brooklyn Snowmen in February 2026, which comes as advertised. This photo post has a tie-in to last week's newsletter. Toward the end of Newsletter 269, I wrote that I was wrapping things up so I could go outside for a walk. At that time, I had what I thought was a final draft of the snowman article ready. However, I saw an additional snowman on my walk. I added it to the draft when I returned home before publishing the article.

Continuing the snow theme, I published Geese in the Snow in Brooklyn Bridge Park. While this is also a February 2026 snow article, the snow in this case came from our second of three heavy snowfalls in Brooklyn this year instead of the third (the snowman article and the next one I will share came from the third), which also led to my late January anecdotal essay about personally saving a car.

Returning to our most recent snow-fall, I wrapped up the week with Snowy Statues in Brooklyn (February 2026). Here, I documented how the winds blew during Brooklyn's most recent blizzard by looking at the snow on two statues near Brooklyn Borough Hall.

I shared two photos on Pixelfed. The first was my August photo of a street in Brooklyn Heights just after 11:00 PM (previously seen on NLJ), and my second was the first snowman (or snowbear) from my first article of the week. Both photos come with short descriptions and links to their respective NLJ articles (they are higher resolution than the versions I used on NLJ).

Over on ECS, I published quick thoughts on the now-confirmed GrapheneOS-Motorola Partnership. In response to a Nintendo Life post, I offered my suggestion for Pokémon That Deserve a Second Chance. I concluded the week with a specious take on the First Impression of Pokémon Winds and Waves. While I am way behind on anime at the moment, I followed-up on one I covered last year in another response post titled On Ruka in Rent-A-Girlfriend. Finally, I shared something I learned in The Oldest Known Mallard.

I continued publishing (almost) daily selections of links on The Emu Café Social. The idea is the same (just shorter) as the around the web section of this newsletter. See my ECS link collections for March 1, March 3, March 4, March 5, and March 6. Speaking of links...

Leaves from around the web

As if the articles and links I shared throughout last week were not enough for you, I present 21 links from around the web (no repeats, I did not use any of these links on ECS).

Statue of limitations

Statue removed from Dallas Love Field installed at Texas Rangers’ ballpark
Evan Grant for The Dallas Morning News. March 2, 2026.

Good for the Texas Rangers and the Lone Ranger.

Were classical statues painted horribly?
Ralph S. Weir for Works in Progress. December 16, 2025.

I agree with Mr. Weir: They probably weren't.

Giant Rhubarb Statue
Rebecca Nicke for Atlas Obscura. December 4, 2025.

No false advertising detected.

Baby animal trouble

Lost baby seal rescued after taking a nap in the middle of busy Jersey Shore highway
Jeanne Erickson for the New York Post. February 28, 2026.

Understandable. Being lost is draining for a baby seal.

Why Has Punch, an Adorable Baby Monkey, Struggled to Fit in With His Troop? Scientists Explain the Lives of Japanese Macaques
Sara Hashemi for Smithsonian Magazine. March 5, 2026.

Imagine trying to make friends at school while knowing that millions of people around the world are watching your every move on social media.

Learn my secrets for avoiding bad things

Night in the Woods publisher Finji accuses TikTok of creating "racist, sexist" and uneditable GenAI ads for its games
Sophie McEvoy for Games Industry.biz. February 20, 2026.

This is pretty bad. I would recommend that people stop buying ads on TikTok. No no, let us go one step further. Try uninstalling it.

She Came Out of the Bathroom Naked, Employee Says
Nappanoi Lepapa, Ahmed Abdigadir, and Julia Lindblom for Svenska Dagbladet. February 27, 2026.

I know a fool-proof method for not recording yourself with smart glasses for analysis by Meta and random people Meta hires in Nigeria. I can't tell you though. Super proprietary.

The danger of fads

The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents
Sasha Rogelberg for Fortune (via Yahoo! News). February 21, 2026.

They had a solution in search of a problem. That led to actual problems. The only solution will be to double down on the solution that caused the problem. So on and so forth.

South Korea: How a chewy cookie inspired by Dubai chocolate has taken over the nation
Kelly Ng for BBC. January 14, 2026.

I went to Marshalls a few weeks ago and saw that they were selling "Dubai chocolate" for cheap. I took that as a sign that the "craze" is winding down (but perhaps not in South Korea, if BBC is to be believed).

It's subtle

America Lost An Infamous Wargame To Iran. That’s Why We’re Winning Now.
Alexander Bullock for Daily Wire. March 5, 2026.

Very interesting article by a retired U.S. Army Colonel. People may be missing one thing though. In the infamous wargame, Iran was played U.S. Marine Corps Lt. General Paul Van Riper. In the real war, Iran is being played by what's left of the Iranian government and Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

Former Air Force Fighter Pilot And F-35 Instructor Charged With Training Chinese Military
Thomas Newdick for The War Zone. February 26, 2026.

If the Chinese military is so mighty, why do they need Western pilots to train their pilots?

Innovative engineering

NYC's DEP Takes On Cleanup of Brooklyn's Toxic Gowanus Canal
Chuck MacDonald for Construction Equipment Guide.com. February 5, 2026.

They're doing a good enough job that I am no longer sure that the seagulls in the canal will grow thumbs.

‘World’s largest battery’ to help run Google’s new clean energy data center
Atharva Gosavi for Interesting Engineering. February 25, 2026.

Very rustic solution.

Aerial combat

Israeli Air Force First To Claim F-35 Air-To-Air Kill Of A Crewed Aircraft
Thomas Newdick for The War Zone. March 4, 2026.

Don't worry aviation fans: It wasn't one of the F-14s. They shot down a yak. No, really.

Drone warfare on a budget

LUCAS's Coming Out Party
CDR Salamander. March 3, 2026.

Our knockoff Iranian suicide drones are neat but for $35,000 I will stick to things I can use more than once.

A Ukrainian bomber drone went out for a strike mission. It returned impaled by a crude trident, photos show.
Jake Epstein for Business Insider. March 2, 2026.

Russia will never give up it's dream of being a maritime power.

Old phone stuff

Symbian: The forgotten FOSS phone OS
Liam Proven for The Register. July 17, 2025.

I do not recall knowing anything about Symbian but it is neat that the source code is available.

The flip phone web: browsing with the original Opera Mini
Corbin Davenport for The Spacebar. February 3, 2025.

I'm surprised Opera Mini still works.

First headline impressions

$13 Burritos? Why Now’s the Time to Win With Vending and Micro Markets
Becca Swindale for Vending Connection. August 19, 2025.

The headline made me concerned that the article was advocating for $13 vending machine burritos. Instead, it is suggesting an alternative to $13 burritos. Aside: People are spending $13 on a burrito?

Mogollon Ghost Town
Katie Teems Norris for Atlas Obscura. April 17, 2025.

I first read the headline as "Mongolian" and thought that would be weird since Mongolia is big and relatively sparsely populated. But it turns out Mogollon (New Mexico) is neat in its own right.

Vietnam Has Reached An Agreement to Buy U.S. F-16 Fighter Jets
Reuben Johnson for 1945. May 7, 2025.

This would have been a very confusing headline in 1975.

Most-turned leaves of the newsletter week

I use a privacy-friendly and entirely local tool called Koko Analytics (see my 2025 article) to track page visits. 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 our most-visited articles for the week of February 28-March 6 with notes on their cumulative ranking statistics going back to 2021.

1. Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search
   N.A. Ferrell. April 17, 2025.
   This Year: 10 appearances and 8 top placements.
   Cumulative: 37 appearances and 29 top placements.

2. Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine
   N.A. Ferrell. January 21, 2026.
   7 appearances and 2 top placements.

3. Dragonair Safari in Pokémon Yellow
   N.A. Ferrell. October 5, 2023.
   This Year: 7 appearances.
   Cumulative: 26 appearances.

4. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2
   N.A. Ferrell. January 18, 2022.
   This Year: 6 appearances.
   Cumulative: 69 appearances and 4 top placements.

5. Follow The New Leaf Journal Pixelfed Atom Feed
   N.A. Ferrell. January 18, 2021.
   This Year: First appearance.
   Cumulative: 3 appearances.

Analysis

This week's top-five was similar to last week's, with the Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search leading the way by a good margin over second-place Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine, which has been impressively consistent after its break-out debut week. Both of my Pokémon articles in 3rd and 4th place (swapped their order from last week) had their best weeks in terms of visitors in 2026.

The notable entry in this week's ranking is 5th place Follow The New Leaf Journal Pixelfed Atom Feed, which just barely missed last week's ranking after being overtaken on Friday by Amazon “Cargo Bikes” in Brooklyn. This week, my Pixelfed ATOM feed post flipped the script, coming from behind to nip my Amazon Cargo Bike article on Friday to take the last spot in the weekly top-five (both had almost the same number of views as in the previous week). While this is the third time my Pixelfed ATOM feed post has made a weekly top-five, it is the first time it has been noted in this newsletter. I started including the top-five ranking in the newsletter in the spring of 2021. My Pixelfed ATOM article made the ranking for Newsletter Weeks 2 and 5 of 2021 (January and February respectively), which is before I started including the full list. Thus, we can consider it a "debut" of sorts. While I do not know why it is having its best-ever stretch more than five years after being published, it did inspire me to start posting to Pixelfed again so that people have a reason to follow my account's ATOM feed.

(Extra note: 4th and 5th place in this week's ranking were both published on January 18, but exactly one year apart.)

Taking leaf

I see some light (albeit not much Sun) coming through my window, so I will leave things off here so I can get ready to go outside. I have some in-progress projects that, work permitting, I hope to share with you 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.

Until White Day,
Cura ut valeas -- Nicholas A. Ferrell.