Leafy Intro

Welcome to the 286th 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 have a busy first week of summer in the publishing department, but I do have some extra links to make up for my shortcomings.

Leaves from the week that was

My only New Leaf Journal article last week was Supporting the Pumpernickel Bagel, wherein I express solidarity with my favorite bagel after reading that some bagel shops are dropping it from their lineups.

I also published just one post on The Emu Café Social: Pook-Emu Bee Links for June 23, 2026.

Leaves from around the web

Because I did not publish much last week, I will go with a full slate of 21 links from around the web with quotes and my patented link commentary.

Sticking your neck out

1. Keep Your Eyes Peeled for Gracie, a Reticulated Giraffe on the Loose in Texas (Sarah Kuta for Smithsonian Magazine. June 25, 2026.)

"In May, Gracie came to live at Cedar Hollow Ranch, a private facility that breeds, raises and sells exotic animals. But she escaped this month. Now, the ranch is offering a $5,000 reward for information that leads to her capture and safe return."

I'm on it!

2. Gracie the giraffe has been found after nearly 2 weeks in Texas (Ariana Garcia for Houston Chronicle. June 26, 2026.)

"Vick Jones, ranch manager at Cedar Hollow Ranch near Leakey, confirmed to Chron that the nearly 4-year-old reticulated giraffe was spotted around 7:30 a.m. Friday during an aerial search."

Or I was on it. Too late.

We sacrifice for a good cause

3. Building a Home NAS from Mostly Spare Parts (Max Glenister. February 23, 2026.)

"I’ve had a SNUNMU GK3 mini-PC kicking about since early-2023, barely used. An impulse buy that ended up on a shelf, alongside a drawer full of old drives from various machines and NAS attempts that never quite came together. Picking up a 5-bay USB enclosure finally gave me a reason to use all of it."

All of our computer builds will use spare parts thanks to the AI monsters.

4. Can You Spot the AI Bodega? (Clio Chang for Curbed. June 22, 2026.)

"To make the sign, Fawad put his photo through an AI app that did a passable job of rendering his likeness in cartoon form and sent it to his sign guy, who printed and installed it."

I seldom stop to look at bodega/food cart posters.

Littering

5. Woman who emptied Knicks trashcan on street — then stole it — is fired from JPMorgan Chase, was DEI exec (Lydia Moynihan for the New York Post. June 23, 2026.)

"Angie Báez, 40, was promoted to executive director of community and industry engagement for card and connected commerce at JPMorgan Chase more than a year ago ... She previously served as executive director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at New York-based review website the Infatuation, which Chase acquired as part of its broader push into lifestyle and experiential content."

I famously (or so I tell myself) once rescued a fallen trash can in Gowanus without emptying its contents or taking it home. While I am inclined to think that my course of conduct was superior to Ms. Báez's, no bank has ever offered me six figures for a do-nothing job, so what do I know?

6. Indoor sandpit with 'natural sand' saves NYC kids from public 'litter boxes' -- for a fee (Katherine Donlevy for the New York Post. November 28, 2025.)

"Urban Dunes — which bills itself as 'NYC’s Only Indoor Sandbox' — offers three 'Sandventure' rooms, where kids can play for 90 minutes for the price of $30."

It's always interesting to learn what our betters are up to.

Following our lead

7. U.S. Drinking Rate at New Low as Alcohol Concerns Surge (Lydia Saad for Gallup. August 13, 2025.)

"Adults who think moderate drinking is bad for one’s health are just as likely as all others to report they drink alcohol (55% and 54%, respectively). However, only half of those who harbor health-related concerns say they have had a drink within the past seven days (49%), compared with 69% of those who don’t share these health concerns."

Ambiguous headline, but we learn "concerns" refers to consumers rather than the industry.

8. “Alcohol is the best medicine” removed from Japanese government website (Master Blaster for SoraNews24. June 23, 2026.)

"Also, up until only a few months ago, you could go to the website of Japan’s National Tax Agency (NTA) and read “alcohol is the best medicine” in their Information on Alcohol section."

On second thought...

Asset accumulation

9. How Much Stuff Do You Own? (Paul Lukas. May 6, 2026.)

"Remember “Lexi,” the Ohio woman who meticulously logged all the mail she sent and received over a 10-year period? One thing I loved about that project, aside from its niche-specificity, was its obsessive sense of completism. Lexi had an inner drive to document every single mailpiece in her life."

You can document every issue of The Newsletter Leaf Journal even though it comes in [e]mailpiece form.

10. How device hoarding by Americans is costing economy (Kevin Willians for CNBC. November 25, 2025.)

"While squeezing as much life out of your device as possible may save money in the short run, especially amid widespread fears about the strength of the consumer and job market, it might cost the economy in the long run, especially when device hoarding occurs at the level of corporations."

This was an atrocious take when it was published last November. With hindsight, we can now add to its infirmities that it aged poorly in light of the ongoing AI-driven RAM/storage media price ratchet.

11. Why Do We Keep Letting Amazon Kill Kindles? (Charlie Sorrel for IFIXIT. May 18, 2026.)

"On May 20, 2026, Amazon is slapping long-time Kindle users in the face. In mere days, devices older than 2012 will be barred from the Kindle store. That means no new books, and if you happen to log out of it, that device loses access to your library, too. This isn’t just sunsetting security updates. It’s literal forced obsolescence."

I'm an IFIXIT fan and I have written about some issues with how Amazon handles the Kindle store. But of all the things to complain about, Amazon dropping support for something after 14-16 years is low (assuming arguendo it even makes the list), especially since most of the old Kindles can be rooted and used separately from an Amazon account.

Some fish hide, other fish come to you

12. MBARI's advanced underwater technology reveals a new species of deep-sea snailfish (HT Caroline Crampton) (Steven Haddock for MBARI. September 8, 2025.)

"MBARI’s advanced underwater technology is revealing the remarkable species that thrive in the deep sea. In 2019, MBARI researchers encountered an unfamiliar pink snailfish swimming just above the seafloor. New research from MBARI collaborators has confirmed this individual represents a species previously unknown to science: the bumpy snailfish (Careproctus colliculi)."

Very photogenic fish. It was thinking "what took you so long?"

13. Ravenous ‘Frankenfish’ that can walk on land found on Long Island for first time (Brandon Cruz for the New York Post. June 7, 2026.)

"The Northern Snakehead fish was caught by a fisherman at Lily Pond in Suffolk County last week and now officials are crafting a plan of defense in case there are more of the sharp-toothed, tough-to-kill creatures still lurking locally..."

The elites are hiding from you knowledge that you can catch it without fishing. Just go to the water and say "here fishy fishy" and it'll walk right out.

14. Rare 'Pink Meanie' Jellyfish Are Blooming Off the Coast of Texas (Sarah Kuta for Smithsonian Magazine. October 7, 2025.)

"Pink meanies start off small as babies, but can grow to up to 50 pounds, according to Tunnell. Their tentacles can stretch up to 70 feet long."

These will be hard to miss.

Problem and solution

15. The children (me, 25) yearn for penpals (Meli. May 13, 2026.)

"I’m pretty lonely, if I’m honest with you. So lonely that I made a Hinge account (everyone laugh at her). I realized a day into it that going from not being able to meet a work friend outside of work and going to making a profile on a dating app is a terrible idea."

The jury is out on operation penpal, but it is probably a better idea than looking for friends on algorithmic commercial dating apps.

16. Wisdom from a Clear Pen (Steve Simkins. May 6, 2026.)

"In the end, I came to a place that helped me categorize the things in my life and reduce the pieces I really don’t need, yet keep the things that are beautiful and meaningful. All thanks to a clear little pen in my pocket."

You need a pen if you want to try the penpal idea.

Tetris is a classic

17. Quality-of-life on Tetris games (J Carlos Roldan. April 9, 2025.)

"While building it, we realized how many underappreciated mechanics Tetris have, that make the gameplay more pleasant."

You can learn some more interesting things about Tetris gameplay design in the the related Hacker News thread for this article.

18. 'Bizarro World' (Billy Baker for The Boston Globe. August 19, 2007.)

"[H]ow, in a roundabout way, my wife and I this spring found ourselves in a Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, arcade so that she could attempt to break a world record in another of those classic video games, Tetris."

This story comes with many unexpected twists and turns after the initial unexpected twist.

Learning

19. Very Early It Was Too Late (Theodore Dalrymple for The American Conservative. March 1, 2026.)

"You don’t realize until maturity, at least if you are like me, that time is not on a spool that can be wound backwards at will. Every moment that is ill-spent is too late. Too-lateness is the common condition of mankind."

Settling on a single quote from a good Dalrymple essay is a challenge.

20. Wild Cockatoos Learn Which Snacks Are Safe to Eat by Copying Their Friends, New Research Suggests (Sara Hashemi for Smithsonian Magazine. May 8, 2026.)

" It turns out that wild cockatoos in Australia also figure out which potential snacks are safe to eat by copying their peers, researchers report April 30 in the journal PLOS Biology."

I think they would like my whole wheat cracker peanut butter sandwiches.

21. 7 cable management tricks I regret not learning sooner (Tanveer Singh for XDA. April 11, 2025.)

"The best way to manage cables inside your PC is to eliminate them wherever possible. A modular power supply is one of the easiest ways to do that. By allowing you to use only the cables you need for your components, a modular PSU significantly simplifies your cable management needs. And modular power supplies aren't too costly compared to non-modular or semi-modular units anymore."

I have a non-modular power supply in my workstation computer because the modular prices were not great back in the summer of 2020. But there is not too much happening in my computer so the cord situation is acceptable.

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 June 20-26 with notes on their cumulative ranking statistics going back to 2021.

• (1.) Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine (NAF. Jan. 21, 2026.) 23 appearances and 7 top placements.

• (2.) Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search (NAF. April 17, 2025.) 26 appearances and 19 top placements in 2026; 53 appearances and 40 top placements overall.

• (3.) How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name (NAF. March 11, 2021.) 15 appearances in 2026; 25 appearances overall.

• (4.) Supporting the Pumpernickel Bagel (NAF. June 20, 2026.) Debut.

• (5.) Usagi Drop: A Complicated Anime Pick (NAF. Jan. 19, 2021.) First appearance in 2026; 4 appearances overall.

Analysis

Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine snagged its fifth consecutive top placement, followed by Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search for the fifth consecutive week (they have been top-two for 23 consecutive weeks). While it was not too close, the former has come down to Earth such that we could see Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search regain the top spot in at some point in July.

After seeing 2026 top-five regular How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name coming in at third, we had two articles make their 2026 debuts. First, my pumpernickel bagel essay made a first-week ranking appearance. In fifth place we had my early 2021 look at a the 2011 anime adaptation of Usagi Drop (as well as the underlying manga series' baggage). Some readers may wonder where the "4 appearances overall" came from for the Usagi Drop review. Two were from early 2021 (not long after it was published). The third and most-recent was a runner-up placement in 2022 Newsletter Week 49, which covered December 3-9 of 2022. However, notwithstanding its long absence from our weekly top-five, the Usagi Drop article is sitting in a very solid and surprising 12th place overall for 2026 as we approach the half-way point for the year.

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.

Next week's Newsletter Leaf Journal falls on the 250th anniversary of America's independence. You can expect a very 4th of July-themed newsletter next week (with hope, accompanied by similarly-themed articles).

Until the 250th,
Cura ut valeas -- Nicholas A. Ferrell.