Welcome to the 278th 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.

While April 27, 2026, was The New Leaf Journal's birthday, I always think of May as our birthday month. This May 2, 2026, we welcome the month of May with a look back at the end of April.

Leaves from the week that was

I had a busy week with my day-job, but I still found time to publish three new New Leaf Journal leaves since mailing Newsletter 277.

First, I commemorated NLJ's sixth birthday with an article titled NLJ Sixth Birthday Project. This was published late on our birthday night while I was taking a break from a work assignment. As late as last Sunday, I had planned to publish an omnibus birthday article chock-full of "wisdom" I have accrued from six years of running The New Leaf Journal. However, I did not like the way the mega-article was coming out, so I decided to shift gears and write a shorter birthday post introducing a six-part writing website "wisdom" series. The first of six entries comes today (it may already be published, depending on when you are reading this newsletter) and there will be new entries in the series every five days through May 27. As for our actual birthday article, readers will find some fun New Leaf Journal stats in addition to the project introduction.

I ended April with Weathered White Brooklyn Banana Bench. If you are a very long-time NLJ reader, you may remember that I published a photo post about a Brooklyn banana bench back in April 2021. That post was also randomly featured in Newsletter 143 thanks (probably) to Facebook. Five years after I documented the banana bench, the bench remains. But I noticed that its appearance had changed so much that a follow-up article was warranted.

Finally, I welcomed May with Memories – Recording Mario Kart: Double Dash on VHS, wherein I share a personal video game anecdote from the summer of 2005.

My day job took a toll on my Emu Café Social publishing, but I still posted a good selection of short articles.

• Pook-Emu Bee daily links: 04-28, 04-30, and 05-01.

• My unique take: Schrödinger’s Ayatollah and Umineko: When They Cry

• Things I Learned: Learning About Cassette Futurism and Banned Trees and Plants in New Jersey.

Leaves from around the web

Last week was neither my strongest nor weakest publishing week, but the types who wade through my articles will surely need more reading this weekend. Good news: I have 21 links from around the web with my patented link commentary.

The solution is there if you look for it

Invasive ‘crazy worms’ confirmed in California, and there’s no way to kill them
Daniel Farr for the New York Post. April 22, 2026.

I don't think they're immortal...

Worms that Writhe and Jump? Oh No!
Kate St. John at Outside My Window. April 30, 2026.

"p.s. How to get rid of them? Put them in a sealed plastic bag in the sun for at least 10 minutes."

Thanks to me the news doesn't sneak up on you

Mali Is Russia's New Afghanistan And the Bill Is Going to Europe
Zineb Riboua. April 25, 2026.

It's definitely not Russia's "new Afghanistan" because it will cut and run, and worse then comes to worst. Speaking of worse coming to worst, let no one say I didn't warn everyone back in Newsletter 179, Newsletter 197, Newsletter 241, and Newsletter 261. Time marches forward, except in Mali where it is always 2012.

Hidden Fees: Federal Taxpayers on the Hook for Autism Fraud Through Medicaid
Open the Books. April 27, 2026.

The losers of autism Medicaid fraud are taxpayers, children misdiagnosed with autism, and people who actually have some form of autism. Winner: Fraudsters and the politicians (or foreign countries) they donate to.

Attack of the cephalopods

Earliest octopuses were giant top predators in Cretaceous oceans
Numerous authors. April 23, 2026.

Fun fact: I don't taste good.

Octopus Fluids Sheening Ink - Violet Medusa Review
Sarah Read for The Pen Addict. April 16, 2026.

I sit here struggling to come up with a headline and people out there are casually dropping product names "Octopus Fluids Sheening Ink - Violet Medusa." I tip my hat and recognize greatness. (No octopuses were harmed in the making of this ink.)

10 More Useful Things
Lisa at Olive Octopus. December 14, 2025.

If you're looking for tips for displaying your big enamel pin collection...

Fairly faeries

Denmark Fairy Doors Trail in Denmark, Australia
Obscuravibes for Atlas Obscura. December 24, 2023.

Very small doors. This reminds me of two article topic ideas, but from Brooklyn instead of Denmark.

Raising the Dead Fairy-Style: A Witch, A Copper and the Sidh in 19C Ireland (HT Strange Comppany)
Simon Young. May 1, 2026.

This fairy article allowed me to use the "first" link remaining on my current newsletter link list (see above), so that is cool.

Man Declares Informational Bankruptcy After Deleting 400 Saved Articles He Swore He Was Going to Read
Benjamin Witt. April 9, 2026.

This reminds me of the time I saved another document over a large text file of saved links to share in this newsletter.

I now understand what happened

1903: The 98th Street Cow That Stole Sausages From a Yorkville Deli
Peggy Gavin at The Hatching Cat of Gotham. March 29, 2025.

I know that this story is about the wild cow escape but I can't help but think that getting rid of the farms in Manhattan may have been a mistake.

'She's a very talkative cow': the curious history of America's animal mayors (HT Strange Company)
Adam Gabbatt for The Guardian. April 27, 2026.

I'm a little sour that I didn't get a backlink.

Probably time-sensitive

Why Has Scoring Taken a Nosedive in the 2026 NBA Playoffs? (HT Hoops Head Podcast Newsletter) Kirk Goldsberry for The Ringer. April 28, 2026.

See also a related article on ESPN. I appreciated the 2003-04 references as the author of an article on the 2004 NBA Finals. Nostalgia trip.

Now What Moves the Stuff That Defends America?
Joe Buccino for RealClear World. April 27, 2026.

"Domestic freight rail is one of the few critical infrastructure systems this country actually controls end to end. It should be American-owned, American-operated and built to perform when the maritime system cannot. Build it stronger, not more fragmented."

Peru Tries to Impeach 9th President in 10 Years, Election Results Nowhere in Sight
Christian K. Caruzo for Breitbart. April 23, 2026.

If they impeach a president next year they'll join Bill Russell's Boston Celtics in the 10-in-11 years club. Of course, Bill Russell's Celtics won 10 NBA championships in 11 years (1958-59 through 1968-69). That was probably better than Peru's torrid impeachment pace.

Green-Wood Cemetery Opens Long-Awaited Visitor Center
Anna Bradley-Smith for Brownstoner. April 14, 2026.

I have been to Greenwood a few times since starting The New Leaf Journal. Maybe I should be useful and conduct some on-the-ground reporting.

Tangentially related to my first article of May 2026

Main Character Syndrome
Connor Tumbleson. April 12, 2026.

I recall noticing an uptick in the behavior described in this article when Survivor and other "reality" TV shows had their moment in the early 2000s. Little did I know what was coming in the then-near future...

Is the cassette tape revival a good thing?
Mike Piggott at Twisted Wonderland. March 16, 2025.

Call me when the VHS revival starts.

What have YOU done with your life lately?

I Played Some Ancient JRPGs
Takafumi at Please, no hate. November 20, 2025.

I haven't played any of these RPGs (much less heard of a few), but I'd be down to try the old school Fire Emblems.

So I bought a Venus flytrap...
Renkon at Midnight Reading. April 21, 2026.

The fruit fly plan didn't work out, but there's always a backup plan.

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 April 25-May 1 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: 18 appearances and 16 top placements.
   Cumulative: 45 appearances and 37 top placements.

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

3. Amazon “Cargo Bikes” in Brooklyn
   N.A. Ferrell. April 9, 2025.
   This Year: 10 appearances.
   Cumulative: 45 appearances and 8 top placements.

4. How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name
   N.A. Ferrell. March 11, 2021.
   This Year: 9 appearances.
   Cumulative: 19 appearances.

5. Enabling Charging Optimization on GrapheneOS
   N.A. Ferrell. January 12, 2025.
   This Year: First appearance.
   Cumulative: 7 appearances.

Analysis

The top-two spots were occupied by Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search and Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine for the 15th consecutive week, with both having strong weeks and the former running away with its 16th top-placement in the 18 weeks of 2026. The single-year record for top-placements is 30 by The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei back in 2022. There is still a long way to go in 2026, but it is not too soon to wonder whether that record is in play. Positions three and four went to our third- and fifth-most-visited articles of 2026 to date. How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name, which continues to post its best-ever view numbers this year, is now one weekly placement away from notching 10 in one year for the first time. They were followed by Enabling Charging Optimization on GrapheneOS, which made its first weekly ranking appearance of 2026 after making six appearances in the final third of 2025.

News leaf journal

I had noticed a few months ago that a small number of NLJ articles opened very slowly, especially without page caching (I bypass page caching when I am logged in to NLJ). The article I was most aware of was 52 Things I Learned in 2025, but I had some similar issues all the way back when I worked on March 30, 2025 30 Mar 2025 Worst NBA Playoff Teams By SRS (1984-2024) in March 2025. Last week, I saw in Google Search Console that Google could not access my SRS article due to a timeout error. I tried to navigate to the article and hit a similar error. Like a responsible server administrator, I monitored our server logs while opening the article. There, I saw an error related to a file in our WordPress theme relating to its built-in lazy loading functionality for YouTube embeds. Insofar as I could tell, that code concerned a lazy loading setting that I do not use (we use WordPress' built-in lazy loading as of the date of this newsletter). I decided to try deleting the offending code (along with code for lazy loading Google Maps embeds). The problem was solved. You are very welcome everyone.

Notable leaf journal

May is always a fun month here at The New Leaf Journal since it was our first full month online back in 2020. With six Mays in the books already, we have a number of distinctly May articles. I present them for your reading enjoyment below:

• The Trees Leaf in May: A dictionary definition turned into the capstone article of The New Leaf Journal's inaugural full month. See also its 2021 successor, The Brooklyn Tree Watersprouts Leaf in May.

• May Sky Visual Novel Posts: May Sky is a 2005 freeware Japanese visual novel. I reviewed the English localization and ended up writing a number of articles about it, all of which can be found in this Collection post. If you are looking for something fun to try this May, give my May Sky review a read and then try the novel (it is readily playable on Windows and Linux, but probably not on ARM-based Macs, alas), perhaps with my four-part companion analysis.

• Collage – Visual Novel Review: Collage is another visual novel I reviewed from the same era and localization project as May Sky. Like May Sky, it mostly takes place in May, and it is an excellent, distinctly mid-2000s piece, in its own right. It also comes with my May recommendation, albeit it can be a bit of a pain to run (despite having an English version, it requires a Japanese language environment, which I explain in my review). For those of you who never tried a visual novel before, I will note that Collage's cast consists almost entirely of working adults.

• 1883 Opening of the Brooklyn Bridge: A history article covering the May 24, 1883 festivities surrounding the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. Many of the festivities took place in areas I have photographed in the present day for New Leaf Journal articles.

• Anna Jarvis and the Origin of Mother’s Day in the United States: An article on the origin and true meaning of Mother's Day.

• The Last Stand of Constantine XI: Once among our most-visited articles, my summary of a nineteenth century text on the last stand of the last Eastern Roman Emperor, Constantine XI.

• Four May Issues of The Nursery Magazine (1873-81): I excerpted articles and poems from four May issues of a nineteenth century children's magazine called The Nursery Magazine.

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.

As we enter year seven at The New Leaf Journal, I have some fun projects lined up for May. I look forward to publishing some interesting new articles throughout the week and sharing them with you next Saturday.

Until May 9, 2026,
Cura ut valeas -- Nicholas A. Ferrell.