Leafy intro

Welcome to the 294th 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 did not have my most productive week in terms of publishing new articles, but I dare say my output, as described below, was acceptable. After seeing what is (or was) new at NLJ and ECS, enjoy my regular selection of links from around the web and my list of our most-visited articles from the week.

Leaves from the week that was

I published three new articles on The New Leaf Journal since mailing Newsletter 293.

First up was Free White Printer in Brooklyn Heights Reminds Me of Visual Novel. As advertised, I shared a photo of a free-for-the-taking printer left outside with a subtly humorous note, and tied it into my February 2026 review of Shiroi Printer.

I will skip ahead to my third and final article of the week, Nintendo 64 at 30 and My N64 Memories. I started drafting this one all the way back in June, but I did not get around to finishing it until this week. As a preface to my promised Nintendo 64 memories (which begin in 1997-98), I also shared in some detail my first experiences with video games, which were necessary for placing my introduction to the N64 in its proper context.

My middle article on NLJ was Recapping Junited and JulyReply 2026 at ECS. This comes very much as advertised, but you will find all of my short “Junited” and “JulyReply” links from The Emu Café Social along with the articles and blog posts I shared collected in one convenient place. Speaking of The Emu Café Social…

I published Pook-Emu Bee daily links posts from Monday-Friday. See 08-17, 08-18, 08-19, 08-20, and 08-21. I only published two non-links posts. I questioned what I deemed to be Sensationalist Economics Reporting in Morning Brew and I agreed in full with a short post I stumbled upon in Sensationalist Economics Reporting in Morning Brew.

Leaves from around the web

Staying retired is hard

1 | F-117 Nighthawk Needs Fresh Explosives For Its Tailhook Nearly Two Decades After ‘Retirement’ (Travis Trevithick for The War Zone. August 20, 2026.)

Despite being officially retired in 2008, a pocket fleet of U.S. Air Force F-117 Nighthawk stealth jets has continued to operate from the secretive Tonopah Test Range Airport in Nevada … This … requires continued maintenance and logistics support, and a recent contracting notice has now put a spotlight on one of the aircraft’s more obscure features: an emergency tailhook that deploys with the help of explosive charges.

I approve of this because it looks cool.

2 | Retired Japanese professional boxer’s sudden return to the sport was motivated by BanG Dream! “It reminded me of the importance of chasing your dreams” (Emmett Harris for Automation West. August 20, 2026.)

While [Koki Inoue’s] decision to return to [professiona] boxing was partly influenced by encouragement from his friends and family members, including his four-time world champion cousin Naoya, he claims that what finally set him back on the boxer’s path was the aforementioned Bang Dream film.

I wrote about one Bang Dream anime (“It’s MyGo!!!!!”) in my 2023 anime year-end review. That one was about a dysfunctional girl’s high school band. It stood out because the series up until that time had been cheery “you can do it!” girl’s band stuff. I only saw MyGo and its direct sequel. Mr. Inoue, on the other hand, was inspired to return to championship prize-fighting because of the sunnier and more conventional Bang Dreams.

European labeling confusion

03 | European Union: EU Court of Justice Prohibits Sale of Beverages as “Nonalcoholic Gin” (Kim Marie Eberhardt for Global Legal Monitor. January 5, 2026.)

On November 13, 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) held that the sale of nonalcoholic beverages under the name of “gin” is prohibited by article 10, paragraph 7 of the EU Spirit Drinks Regulation. (Regulation 2019/787.)

I think most people would be able to distinguish non-alcoholic gin from gin-gin if the bottle says “non-alcoholic,” but then again I never bought gin so what do I know?

04 | ESRB will not adopt PEGI age-rating changes in the US as it “could be confusing” (Sophie McEvoy for Games Industry.biz. March 20, 2026.)

‘ESRB’s research indicates that parents want upfront notice about features like online communications and the ability to spend real money on in-game purchases, but that it could be confusing if non-content related features influence rating category assignments,’ the spokesperson explained.

Both the PEGI and ESRB make compelling points. I’m inclined to agree that online features and in-game purchases should be labeled, but it should probably be distinguished from in-game content.

Many animals need rescuing in greater Long Island

05 | 70 sad-looking chickens plucked out of ‘torturous conditions’ in Long Island house (Brandon Cruz for the New York Post. July 30, 2026.)

Westbury resident Victor Xu, 44, was busted Tuesday after officers responding to the fire in his home found 66 emaciated and dehydrated chickens stuffed into cages — with 60 chicks so small they were “still peeping”…

They were very sad-looking chickens. Fortunately, they were put on a path to adoption instead of whatever Victor Xu had in store for them.

06 | Over 100 cats rescued from three deplorable NYC homes in a single day (Zoe Hussain for the New York Post. August 6, 2026.)

Over 100 cats were rescued from three deplorable, unsanitary homes in Queens and the Bronx on Thursday, according to authorities.

Good thing the chickens and cats were different stories.

New York Magazine’s journalism is all over the place these days

07 | The 6-Year Noise Fight Over a Brooklyn Bridge Park Bathroom (Anne Kadet for Curbed. August 14, 2026.) (Wayback Machine link.)

A few weeks ago, on my usual walk through Brooklyn Bridge Park, I took a detour to the bathroom, only to be confronted by two metal barricades and a sign: “RESTROOMS TEMPORARILY CLOSED.” … I vaguely recalled a 2023 story in The City about the man who lived in the condo directly over the bathrooms. He had sued Brooklyn Bridge Park because he found the toilets too noisy. Was that why the bathrooms were barricaded?

This is a very good report on an ongoing legal saga in Brooklyn Bridge Park, an area I cover with some frequency. It appeared in Curbed, which is a property of New York Magazine. Surely all of NYM’s reporting is of this caliber…

08 | New York Magazine blasted for ‘antisemitic,’ ‘dangerous’ cover story that smeared Jewish people while supposedly celebrating Arab culture (Doree Lewak for the New York Post. August 12, 2026.)

A tone-deaf New York Magazine ‘hit piece’ that purportedly celebrated Arab and Muslim culture in the Big Apple – but actually fixated on a so-called Israeli ‘genocide’ of Palestinians and referred to the Jewish state as a mere ‘land mass currently called Israel’…

Or not. I stand corrected.

Tales of the tapes

09 | The Incredible Story Of Marion Stokes, Who Single-Handedly Taped 35 Years Of TV News (Sarah Kessler for Fast Company. November 21, 2013.)

It’s also the life work of Marion Stokes, who built an archive of network, local, and cable news, in her home, one tape at a time, recording every major (and trivial) news event until the day she died in 2012 at the age of 83 of lung disease.

The end of the article notes it was approximately 40,000 tapes instead of the originally estimated 140,000, but I will submit that it is a great number of tapes in both scenarios.

10 | Unreturned Sabrina the Teenage Witch VHS leads to US woman’s arrest warrant (Richard Luscombe for The Guardian. April 26, 2021.)

She was told to call the Cleveland county district attorney’s office in Oklahoma, which told her there was a warrant for her arrest for failing to return the video of the children’s show that records indicate she rented in 1999.

How nostalgic. I used to watch Sabrina on TGIF.

They’re not going to convince me the main reason for this isn’t “because we could”

11 | The Mammal With the Most Complex Milk Might Not Be Humans, After All. The Atlantic Gray Seal Could Take That Title (Margherita Bassi for Smithsonian Magazine. December 3, 2025.)

So, the researchers collected milk samples from five Atlantic gray seal moms on the Isle of May, a Scottish island. They gathered specimens at four timepoints throughout the animals’ lactation periods, which each lasted around two and a half weeks.

Did they draw stars for the “milk the sea lion” assignment?

12 | Researchers in Japan give mouse glowing sperm (Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. January 12, 2026.)

…[Y]ou haven’t been fervently waiting for our world’s brightest minds to create history’s brightest sperm? Well it’s here anyway, thanks to researchers at Japan’s Hokkaido University, who have successfully created a mouse with sperm that glows.

How do would you describe this work on your resume?

13 | Scientists Made Tiny Diving Suits for Cyborg Cockroaches. They Can Breathe Underwater for 3 Hours (Tibi Pulu for ZME Science. June 30, 2026.)

Researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Waseda University in Japan have built a soft, wearable oxygen system that lets cyborg cockroaches survive and move through water and low-oxygen spaces.

I’m willing to accept what sounds like the beginning of a horror movie if it keeps them out on the streets (or in the rivers) and out of my home.

Watch this

14 | I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C (Terence Eden. August 6, 2025.)

So I bought the only smartwatch I could find with a USB-C port. The Colmi P80 - on offer at £16. It bills itself as “The world’s first type-c smart watch”.

I have a Colmi P76 on the way. It may become an article, but I had a different reason for giving it a spin than charging ports.

15 | [VIDEO] I Have the Dumbest Smartwatch Now (nephitejnf. August 7, 2026.) (Alternative YouTube Link.)

There are a few “internal replacements” for the iconic Casio F91 which add smart functionality. I am tempted to try, but I can’t quite justify it. But I still enjoyed nephitejnf’s video showing him turn his F91 into an Ollee Watch and going through its features.

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 15-21 with notes on their cumulative ranking statistics going back to 2021.

1. Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine. (NAF. January 21, 2026.) 31 appearances and 13 top placements.

2. Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search. (NAF. April 17, 2025.) 34 appearances and 21 top placements in 2026; 61 appearances and 42 top placements cumulatively.

3. Nintendo 64 at 30 and My N64 Memories (NAF. August 20, 2026.) First Appearance.

4. The Worm in My Shoe (NAF. August 13, 2026.) First Appearance.

5. Amazon “Cargo Bikes” in Brooklyn. 15 appearances in 2026; 50 appearances and 8 top placements overall.

Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine regained the top spot for its 13th top-placement in 2026 and 31st consecutive week in the top-two of the ranking. We had two debut articles in 3rd and 4th. Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search had one of the best single days of an article yesterday (Friday the 21st), but there did not seem to be a single source for its visits. Time will tell whether it has staying power. The Worm in My Shoe benefited from Newsbreak App (perhaps because of the lead) last Saturday, giving it the appearance of a one-week wonder. Returning to the ranking in 5th was Amazon “Cargo Bikes” in Brooklyn, which became what I think is just the sixth article to notch 50 total weekly top-fives, joining this week’s runner-up and fellow-2025 article Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search, which crossed the 50-appearance threshold 11 weeks prior.

Taking leave

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 a few work deadlines coming up next week, so I do not expect to be particularly prolific in terms of word count, but perhaps I will exceed expectations.

Independence forever!
Nicholas A. Ferrell.