Leafy intro

Welcome to the 273rd 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.

I did not publish as much this week as last, but I still have a good number of articles and short posts to share with you this Easter-eve.

Leaves from the week that was

I published three new leaves on The New Leaf Journal since mailing Newsletter 273.

I began the newsletter week with Looking at Moji, an Emoji-only Chat App. Moji is open source and free to use online, so you can try it out after reading my review.

In The Proper Place For Articles and Blog Posts, I seconded a strong take that articles and blog posts should be published on websites as articles and blog posts, not on social media platforms or servers as threads.

Finally, our resident fictional dialogue duo, Justin and Justina, made their 2026 debut in Toothpaste Expiration Dates. Come for the dialogue and stay for my postscript wherein I detail the story which inspired this peculiar dialogue topic.

I published 15 new short-form posts on The Emu Café Social. Not as busy as last week, but not bad. Links and summaries below:

• I published daily Pook-Emu Bee links and commentary from Sunday-Friday: 03-29 (don't mind that I accidentally dated the post 03-28-26), 03-30, 03-31, 04-01, 04-02, 04-03.
• I considered “What if the [AI] bubble bursts?”.
• In Retro Re; On Ditching AMP, I tried to recall why I did not implement AMP on NLJ back when it was popular.
• I offered my qualified agreement on responding to articles and posts in Re; Respond, Don’t Create.
• Perhaps my finest specious post of the week: 2026 is the Year of the Windows Desktop(TM).
• On The Ever-Present Old Internet.
• I fell behind on 2025 anime, but I did watch Takopi's Original Sin, which assisted me in writing Takopi’s Original Sin Review Reminds Me of Narcissu.
• ECS is becoming more popular thanks to Connecting Self-Hosted WP Site to Tags.pub.
• DRM gaming adventures -- Capcom: DRM-free on GOG, DRM’d on Steam.

I also created a new ECS account for The New Leaf Journal, which I will use for sharing new articles. That account debuted with Toothpaste Expiration Dates (NLJ Link). If you have an account on Mastodon or a similar ActivityPub-powered social media server, you can follow at @newleafjournal@social.emucafe.org.

Leaves from around the web

I usually give you 21 links from around the web. Because I am taking tomorrow off for the daily Pook-Emu Bee links on ECS, I will feature three bonus links below for 24 instead of 21 (it is up to you to decide which links are the bonus links).

No, I will not eat the snake

Eating venomous snake in Japan
SoraNews24. May 12, 2025.

There's no glass half-full take here. There's not even a glass quarter-full take. But my 1/10 glass full take is at least they cooked it.

Snake Steak Could Be a Climate-Friendly Source of Protein
Meghan Bartels for Scientific American. March 14, 2024.

Absolutely not. But were the elites to coax the masses into eating pythons, Florida would become an intergalactic-tier economic superpower.

Looking at flowers

Stargazing
Amelia at the Syreth Clan. March 2, 2026.

"Spring is here, and I can't wait until I can go outside and walk again — enjoying the pleasant evening air, the lovely fragrances, the beautiful colors, the clear skies, the stars."

sakura walk (tamagawa, ikegami)
Kat & Satoshi at Our Adventures in Japan. March 30, 2026.

Not quite full sakura season by the Tama River, but work in progress.

Hermosawave Photography: Flower River・桜川
Daniel Sofer at Hermosawave Photography. April 3, 2026.

Sugoi.

I don't think they're being entirely honest

Delaware Judge Backs Down from Elon Musk Cases After Bias Accusation
Lucas Nolan for Breitbart. March 31, 2026.

"The LinkedIn post in question highlighted a court verdict that could potentially cost Musk more than $2 billion for defrauding Twitter investors. McCormick responded to the recusal demand in a letter to Musk’s attorneys, stating that she had not intended to click any emoji expressing support for the post and that she had reported possible suspicious activity on her account to LinkedIn."

New York Times Cuts Ties With Book Review Writer Over AI Use
Corbin Bolies for The Wrap. March 30, 2026.

I think this is a case of straight-up human plagiarism that the reviewer is blaming on "AI" because he has concluded that "AI did it" is less damaging to his reputation than the more likely "traditional plagiarism" explanation.

This Plant Produces Plump, Fake Berries to Trick Birds Into Spreading Its Offspring Far and Wide
Sarah Kuta for Smithsonian Magazine. January 21, 2026.

You can't even trust all-natural food these days.

I made the momentous decision on Wednesday to turn this into a K-Pop newsletter

The dystopian world of K-pop
Georgina Mumford for Spiked! March 29, 2026.

K-pop is weird.

'I could have been a K-pop idol - but I'm glad I quit'
Euodias, as told to Elaine Chong, for BBC. February 13, 2020.

K-pop training is weird (not that she needs me to tell her).

What lazy, sex-obsessed Western pop could learn from wholesome K-pop
Ed Power for The Telegraph. September 4, 2025.

I sent this to my good friend, visual novel collaborator, sometimes-New Leaf Journal author, and Brooklyn band front-man, Victor V. Gurbo. TBD whether he follows recommendations 1 (try rapping or some other nonsense) or 8 ("[t]one down the sex"). We'll be watching.

If wishes were horses

Tracy McGrady on how he and Vince Carter could have won a title on Raptors
Shane Garry Acendra for Basketball Network. January 29, 2026.

I doubt that the Raptors would have won a championship had Mr. McGrady re-signed in 2000 instead of leaving Toronto for Orlando, but I would agree with the proposition that the Raptors would have been favored to make the 2001 NBA Finals in this scenario. The more interesting hypothetical is what would have happened if Tim Duncan had joined Mr. McGrady in Orlando.

Which Kentucky Derby Prep Races Best Predict the Triple Crown?
Neil Paine. March 27, 2026.

I'll say none of them look too predictive, but it would probably be interested to see if a more granular approach to analyzing the six races in question yields more predictive results.

Lost and found

Asparagus foraging mission yields Roman tombstone
The History Blog. March 21, 2026.

"Retired firefighter Roberto Tessari was foraging [for wild asparagus] last Wednesday after heavy rains when he spotted a rectangular stone slab at the water’s edge of a canal. He turned it over and saw that it was a funerary inscription." (I hope he also foraged asparagus.)

IDF finds large cache of Hamas weapons in UNRWA aid
Yonah Jeremy Bob for The Jerusalem Post. January 3, 2026.

Well I'll be darned. That's the first place I would have expected to find them.

Three medical innovations but one isn't like the others

Paragonix’s devices are designed to make it easier to transport organs for transplantation
Cassie McGrath for Healthcare Brew. March 28, 2025.

That sounds useful.

Los Angeles hospice fraud reaches billions as Medicare providers scam federal system with fake companies
William La Jeunesse for Fox News. January 30, 2026.

"In the U.S., more than 50% of hospice patients die within 18 days or less. In LA, the average length of stay is more than three months, and, in many hospices, patients never die, with court records showing hospices billing the federal government for 18 months and more." (Alternative explanation: The secret to exceeding hospice care life expectancy is to not be told that you're in hospice care.)

Microbubbles
Ambika Grover for Works in Progress. March 30, 2026.

Bubble methods for delivering medicine where it needs to go.

It's egg season

Episode 29. Sports Logo Design Easter Eggs.
Gameplan Creative, Brigitte Smith, and Paul O'Grady for Sports Branding. November 18, 2025.

The Hartford Whalers logo was slick. One franchise needs to bring back the 80s corporate-chic.

Long Islanders cry fowl on plan to build farm with 6K chickens next door: ‘I’ll move’
Brandon Cruz for the New York Post. February 9, 2026.

What would the acceptable number of chickens be if not 6,000?

Easter links

How the Chocolate Bunny Became the Mouthwatering Mascot of Easter Sweets
Kellie B. Gormly for Smithsonian Magazine. April 3, 2026.

I never thought of the chocolate bunny being the "mascot" of Easter sweets. I'd have probably said Peeps (see our Peeps link in last year's pre-Easter newsletter). But I suppose the chocolate bunny has as good a claim as any.

Spreading the Love of God Volunteers Nationwide Work to Give Easter Baskets to Children in Need
Hannah Knudsen for Breitbart. April 2, 2026.

Good works for Easter.

Easter Sunday 1945 - Kamikaze Attack
Robert Sutherland (via USSWestVirginia.org). April 2, 1945.

"It was Easter Sunday and in the States I imagine that the people were worrying more about what they were going to wear in the Easter Parade rather than what was happening in the war zone. But for us our here so close to Japan we don’t even realize what Easter, Christmas, or anything else is."

PHOTOS Pope Leo XIV carries the cross at the Via Crucis in the Colosseum
EWTN. April 3, 2026.

"The pope personally carried the cross through every station of the Good Friday Way of the Cross at the Colosseum, the first time in four years the figure of the Supreme Pontiff has been present at the amphitheater."

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 March 28-April 3 with notes on their cumulative ranking statistics going back to 2021.

Ranking

1. Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search
   N.A. Ferrell. April 17, 2025.
   This Year: 14 appearances and 12 top placements.
   Cumulative: 41 appearances and 33 top placements.

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

3. Presidents Who Went By Middle Names
   N.A. Ferrell. February 19, 2024.
   First appearance.

4. Using Web Archives To Get Around CAPTCHAs
   N.A. Ferrell. August 12, 2022.
   First appearance.

5. How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name
   N.A. Ferrell. March 11, 2021.
   This Year: 6 appearances.
   Cumulative: 16 appearances.

Analysis

The top-two remained unchanged, but Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine had its worst full week in terms of page views since being published, possibly imperiling its unbroken run of top-two weekly placements since going online. But there were articles of interest beyond the immovable top-two.

This week's bronze medalist was my 2024 study on four U.S. presidents who used their middle names as first names. Although it was our 53rd most-visited article of 2025, it had not made a weekly ranking (I recall it came close on one occasion). Also making its weekly ranking debut is Using Web Archives To Get Around CAPTCHAs, which I published all the way back in August 2022. I had assumed that it had made a weekly ranking before (it was our 41st most-visited article of 2025), but according to my records it had not. Our top-five was rounded out by my March 2021 article, How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name, which is having its best-ever year in year-five by a wide margin and is currently our fifth most-visited article of 2026.

ECS Addendum

The Emu Café Social had received negligible traffic compared to The New Leaf Journal with a few qualified exceptions. There was one instance last fall when one of my ECS posts was shared to Hacker News, which allowed it to accrue enough views to be my most-visited post of the week had I counted ECS posts along-side NLJ. One thing that makes ECS unique is that it has full ActivityPub functionality, which means you can follow it from Mastodon or similar ActivityPub-based social media servers (my account is @naferrell@social.emucafe.org, by the way). On Thursday, I had ECS connect to tags.pub, which "boosts" posts with hashtags. After I did that, my new posts received a surge of views. Had I consolidated NLJ and ECS, Note Connecting Self-Hosted WP Site to Tags.pub and Pook-Emu Bee: Links For 04-03-26 would have been my 3rd and 4th most-visited posts of the week. Of course, NLJ and ECS operate differently, so I do not think it would make sense to do a unified ranking. Moreover, I am a bit confused where the ECS views are coming from, but we will see if it holds up. Quote Takopi’s Original Sin Review Reminds Me of Narcissu was my third most-visited ECS post of the week, so we have our first-ever ECS top-three.

Notable leaf journal

Do you like Mondrian paintings? What if you could play with a rubbery Mondrian painting? Good news: You can! Enjoy LeeT's Mondrian game where you can grab and pull a Mondrian and watch it rebound back to its original position. HT to Linkfest 43 Archaeoacoustics, Nocotourism, and the 8-bit Backrooms (a fellow Buttondown-hosted newsletter) for the link.

Taking leaf

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.

I expect to have some interesting new articles to share in next week's newsletter. Until then, I now take leave to enjoy the nice weather.

Happy Easter,
Nicholas A. Ferrell -- Cura ut valeas.