Welcome to the 293rd 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”). I had a busy week outside of working on new articles, but as you will see below, I think I produced a good selection of writing on my two websites. I now present those links along with links from around the web and other news and notes.

Leaves from the Week that Was

Despite being busy last week, I managed to publish three new NLJ articles since mailing Newsletter 292.

I began the newsletter week with Inflatable Summer Shark in Brooklyn. It is a good thing I documented the inflatable shark when I did. See what it looked like a few days after I published my article.

On Sunday, I published my show-case article of the week: A Taste of Honey (2009) – Visual Novel Review. This visual novel is an adaptation of a 2008 speculative fiction short story of the same name. The creator of both the short story and the adaptation is Fred Warren, who began devoting more time to writing after retiring from the Air Force after more than two decades of service. Both the original short story and the visual novel are free to read.

I ended the week at the NLJ with The Worm in My Shoe. During the week, I read a befuddling article about a snake hiding out in the helmet of a high school football player in Arkansas. That story reminded me of the lower stakes story of that time a worm fond its way into my shoe just over 30 years ago.

I had a good week of publishing on ECS. I published Pook-Emu Bee daily links: 08-09, 08-10, 08-11, 08-12, 08-13, and 08-14.

I also published several non-links posts. In /e/ OS’s App Lounge Apparently Still As I Remember, I checked in on my former daily driver phone OS. I looked back on used game stores with a touch of nostalgia in Used Game Stores in an All Digital World. I concurred with a take that people new to Linux are probably more affected by desktop environments than distributions (provided we are talking about mainstream distributions) in Desktop Environments and Distro Hopping. I questioned one suggestion by the director of the upcoming Persona 4 Revival in Persona 4 Dungeons Were Stressful?. In “Moments Away”, I questioned the word choice in a Brooklyn real estate article. I related to one author's struggle searching for the ideal monospaced font for writing in Finding a Good Monospace Font For Prose. Finally, I brought the week to a close with some Linux app recommendations in Five Linux Apps to Install on Day One.

Leaves from Around the Web

Dinosaurs r ko0l

1 | An 11-Year-Old Boy in a Small Midwestern Town Just Became the Guinness World Record Holder for Being the Youngest Museum Curator (Jess Daninhirsch for Smithsonian Magazine. August 11, 2026.)

Anderson Taylor, now 11, was recently awarded the Guinness World Record for being the youngest male curator of a museum, the first to ever hold the title. He opened the Cambridge Natural History Museum in Cambridge, Illinois, on August 10, 2024, when he was just 9 years and 340 days old.

Become a museum curator with two simple tricks: (1) be an adorable kid; (2) know your dinosaur facts.

2 | Dinosaur Books for Kids Tuva Kahrs for Five Books. March 19, 2026.

Because it's such a popular topic, there are vast numbers of dinosaur books for kids out there. Our Children’s Editor talked to Daniel (age 6) and Caleb (age 7), two young dinosaur book enthusiasts, to find out which ones they have really enjoyed, and would like to recommend to other kids their age and younger.

You can turn to Daniel and Caleb to prepare for your visit to the Cambridge Natural History Museum (see above) and to prepare your dinosaur fight tier lists.

3 | Mockingbird or knocking bird? Bird knocks on house window for a week. Michael Tellez for Fox 26 News. April 27, 2026.

An Oakhurst resident has had a bird knocking on her house window for a week and she has no idea why.

Remember that the birds are dinosaurs.

More museums

4 | Genghis Khan Is Remembered for His Vast Empire and Fearsome Warriors. This Exhibition Explores His Cultural Legacy (Michelle Debczak for Smithsonian Magazine. June 29, 2026.)

'Genghis Khan: How the Mongols Changed the World' at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds explores the life and legacy of the prolific ruler, going beyond his brutal reputation to highlight his lasting legacy on science, politics and the arts.

Yes, he was a ferocious conqueror whose reign left a "lasting legacy on science, politics[,] and the arts," but sources tell me that Genghis' last wish was that we remember him as a big family man.

5 | Ukraine’s Latest Armor Donor? A Military Museum (Thomas Newdick for The War Zone. August 11, 2026.)

In one of the more unusual examples yet of where Ukraine is sourcing military hardware, a Danish military museum has begun transferring vehicles from its own collection for use in the war against Russia. Panzermuseum East, a privately run museum in Denmark specializing in Soviet and Warsaw Pact armor, announced that it has delivered its first batch of armored vehicles to Ukraine.

Suddenly countries from the Middle East to the Far East conspire to keep the Mongols from learning about the Genghis Khan exhibit.

Adding ads

6 | Samsung makes ads on $3,499 smart fridges official with upcoming software update. Scharon Harding for Ars Technica. October 28, 2025.

The ads will be shown on Samsung’s 2024 Family Hub smart fridges. As of this writing, Samsung’s Family Hub fridges have MSRPs ranging from $1,899 to $3,499. The ads will arrive through a software update that Samsung will start issuing this month and display on the fridge’s integrated 21.5- or 32-inch (depending on the model) screen.

Samsung was worried that the $3500 refrigerator did not have enough features to justify the price.

7 | BMW Suddenly Blasts Its Cars' Internal Screens With Aggressive Advertisements. Frank Landymore for Futurism. August 4, 2026.

Starting last week, the German automaker started blasting a promotion for the new Spider-Man movie into its customers’ cars without warning — because nothing says riding in luxury like a full-vehicle pop-up ad. BMW, showing that it was about as in-touch as its drivers are familiar with turn signals, teased the promotion as a 'special surprise.'

I don't drive but I don't doubt I would be looking for my car to provide me with "special surprises" if I were a driver.

Bees

8 | Fossils Suggest That Some Ancient Burrowing Bees Made Their Homes in Rodent Skulls. Margherita Bassi for Smithsonian Magazine. December 18, 2025.

In a study published December 17 in the journal Royal Society Open Science, paleontologists report the first known evidence of bees making themselves at home in the hollows of bones. While the researchers didn’t see any bees, they did find fossils of what were likely the insects’ nests in ancient rodent bones barfed up by giant, now extinct owls.

Home is where the mouse was.

9 | Man Unsure Whether Wife's Vanilla Honey Goat Butter Spread Is For Toast Or Face. The Babylon Bee. August 7, 2026.

Local husband Mark Higgins stood frozen in his kitchen Thursday morning, staring blankly at a glass jar labeled 'Vanilla Honey Goat Butter Spread' while attempting to figure out if it belonged on his toast or his face.

Sequel idea for A Taste of Honey?

Let's check in on AI

10 | 'Restoring' Old Photos With AI Is a Fundamentally Broken Concept. Jason Schneider for PetaPixel. March 28, 2026.

After publication of our original story, ON1 emailed to apologize, saying that the team had inadvertently sent examples in the press kit that weren’t meant to be in there. They further explained that the Restore AI tool was meant to be part of a broader workflow that the examples didn’t include.

There's always an explanation.

11 | Jesus Simulator Switch Review. Mordridaikon at Game Slush Pile. August 15, 2026.

I know, Midnight Works, give us a game based on the Prophet Muhammad like this one and lets see how that goes. They won’t of course, because they know Christians aren’t going to boycott this. But still, they deserve better than this garbage.

I have my doubts that whatever AI tool the slop mill used to generate Jesus simulator would generate a slop game about Muhammad. Similarly, I doubt Nintendo, as lax as it has become in monitoring the Switch store (see above), would allow a Muhammad game.

I'm learning stuff

12 | 2003: MySpace vs. Friendster in a Battle for Digital Natives. Richard MacManus for Cybercultural. December 4, 2025.

Friendster, which had launched publicly in March 2003, wasn’t the first social networking site on the internet. Classmates.com had started in 1995, Six-Degrees.com the following year, and LiveJournal began in 1999 as a kind of blogging spin on the idea. But Friendster was the first of this kind of site to gain major traction in Silicon Valley.

I never heard of Friendster before reading this article. But to be sure, my home computer in 2003 was a Windows 95 without home internet.

13 | What Ever Happened to Dating? The Rise of 'Just Talking' Relationships. D. Scott Sibley for Institute for Family Studies. August 13, 2024.

During class discussions, my students explained that most were not going on dates but instead were engaging in a pre-dating phase of romantic relationship formation that they described as 'talking' or 'just talking.'

Is this what the kids are into these days? The more you know.

Hear me out

14 | Why it’s nearly impossible to buy an original Bob Ross painting. Zachary Crockett for The Hustle. May 2, 2021.

During his lifetime, Ross produced tens of thousands of paintings. Yet, only a handful of his works have popped up for sale in recent years. When they do appear, they often fetch $10k+ and attract dozens of bids.

Don't tell anyone but I think Bob Ross gave away his painting secrets for free. It's almost as if his project was to encourage people to paint rather than to buy his own paintings. Almost.

15 | Electric conveyor belt sushi kit brings the fun of a revolving sushi restaurant into your home. Oona McGee for SoraNews24. April 25, 2025.

The range includes a wide variety of items like sushi oke (wooden sushi rice tubs) and sushi geta (wooden stands for sushi) so you can recreate the look of a sushi restaurant at home, but the standout product amongst them all is the Electric Sushi Kit, which is priced at 2,200 yen (US$15.66).

That looks fun. Now what if we tried cooking the fish before we put it on the tabletop electric conveyor belt? I think that would be good.

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 August 8-14 with notes on their cumulative ranking statistics going back to 2021.

1. Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search. (NAF. April 17, 2025.) 33 appearances and 21 top placements in 2026; 60 appearances and 42 top placements cumulatively.
2. Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine. (NAF. January 21, 2026.) 30 appearances and 12 top placements.
3. Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage. (NAF. February 3, 2023.) First appearance of 2026; 27 appearances and 11 top placements cumulatively.
4. How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name. (NAF. March 11, 2021.) 17 appearances in 2026; 27 appearances cumulatively.
5. Umineko When They Cry Red Truth Guide. (NAF. December 7, 2022.) 4 appearances in 2026; 5 appearances cumulatively.

Analysis

Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search had one of its best weeks of 2026, returning to its peak form from May and easily distancing Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine for the top spot. In third, we see Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage, which had not placed in a weekly top-five since 2023, return to the ranking (perhaps aided by the news stories about the upcoming Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave). While Tiki has not seen a top-five in several years, it sits in 20th overall in 2026, so I would not consider its making a weekly ranking to be a big surprise. Rounding out the list were How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name, which is the only article other than this week's top-two to have appeared in at least half of this year's weekly top-fives, and Umineko When They Cry Red Truth Guide, which continues to punch above its weight (15th most-visited article of 2026) in terms of weekly ranking appearances. I will also note this is, I believe, just the second week where we have articles from five different years in the weekly top-five.

Taking leaves

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 have another busy week ahead of me, but I would like to publish a few pending NLJ/ECS recap articles to clear the way for some interesting and more "original" projects for August's home stretch.

Independence forever!
Nicholas A. Ferrell.