Leafy Intro

Welcome to the 295th 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 was hoping to improve on last week’s low-publishing output. Instead, I either became sick or allergy stricken on Tuesday, which, combined with my day job, led to another weak week in terms of publishing new articles. With that being said, I did publish some under-the-hood improvements, so I will have that to share after links to my new articles, links from around the web, and our most-visited articles of the 36th Newsletter Week of 2026.

(Note: I am syndicating this issue of the newsletter to The New Leaf Journal.)

Leaves from the Week that Was

I only published one new New Leaf Journal article since mailing Newsletter 295. In Links From Feeds and the Story of “Sugar Baby Riri”, I explained how an article from one of my RSS feed subscriptions about visual novels in August 2026 pointed me to a 2024 Japan Times report about the life and crimes of Mai “Sugar Baby Riri” Watanabe. Say what one will but I think this is a great teaser.

I did a little bit better in terms of publishing on The Emu Café Social. To start, I published three editions of my daily links covering 08-31, 09-01, and 09-02. In the non-link collection categories, Fujinokawa First Kyoto-Born Rikishi to Reach Sekiwake in 198 Years covers my learning that 21-year old sumo wrestler Fujinokawa became, as the headline suggests, the first Kyoto-born wrestler to reach the sekiwake (third highest) rank since 1828, or in American terms, the Andrew Jackson administration. I also learned that Pokémon is Older than Tamagotchi after being inspired to investigate the matter. Finally, in Knowing Someone Through Games, I reviewed a post on Strange Voyages blog where the author listed “9 Games to Know Me” along with my 2023 list of games that left the biggest impression on me.

Leaves from the Cybertrees

While my publishing output was disappointing last week, I can make up for it with 15 links from around the web (do note there are many more links in the three editions of the Pook-Emu Bee I published last week).

1 | Robots coming to Universal City [San Antonio, Texas] will measure sidewalks, not spy, officials say (Melanie Love Salazar for MYSA. August 26, 2026.) (via Yahoo! News.)

‘Basically, they cannot talk to you. They make little R2-D2 (Star Wars character) noises when they’re out there,’ Luensmann said. ‘We don’t want to encourage nobody to be in the way of them so they can do the data collection. But if you’re out there and you want to get a picture with them … it’ll actually stop, and you can be able to take a picture if you’re out there.’

If you happen to be in Universal City, you can look forward to not being spied on by the Daxbots (NOT Doxbots) beginning on September 7. The specific non-spying routes are listed in the non-spying report. (I kind of want one but that’s neither here nor there.)

2 | I’m on the spectrum — and so are you! Definition of autism so broad that it’s meaningless (Leonard Sax for the New York Post. September 4, 2026.)

Social media is part of the problem. One popular TikTok video, with more than 11 million views, presents a series of statements. If you agree with the statement, then you may be on the spectrum. One of the statements in that TikTok video is ‘You don’t like talking on the phone because phone conversations are stressful.’

That kind of stuff was also around in online surveys in the latter-half of the 2000s but it took the clinicians a few years to catch up to and embrace the internet nonsense.

3 | Great Writers Aren’t Obsolete. AI Makes Them More Valuable Than Ever. (Jordan Schachtel for American Greatness. September 4, 2026.)

Due to the aforementioned institutional hurdles to creativity, it’s become clear to me that great human writing (with or without AI assistance) is needed now more than ever.

I’m not easily persuaded by flattery but I am so moved by this personal message that I am offering Mr. Schachtel a free subscription to The Newsletter Leaf Journal.

4 | Aunt and U.S. Airman Nephew Arrested in Immigration Fraud Scheme (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. September 2, 2026.)

A few months later, Schulenburg submitted a Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative, to USCIS claiming to be Rivera’s mother so he could become a lawful permanent resident … After becoming a U.S. citizen, Rivera submitted a Petition for Alien Relative to USCIS for his actual mother so she could become a lawful permanent resident.

There are high-level immigration fraud schemes. Then there is becoming a permanent resident through a petition filed by your aunt, falsely claiming to be your mother, and then not long after turning around and filing a petition for your actual mother, somehow assuming that no one would notice.

5 | We’re Taking Hobbies Too Far (Meehika Barua for Time Magazine. July 20, 2026.)

We have turned hobbies from optional leisure activities into a marker of identity. Somewhere along the way, hobbies have become another thing to perform. We are confusing leisure with achievement.

Interesting take. Is it time for me to add another entry in the series (of sorts) I kicked off in 2021 with An Essay on Productivity, Production, and Productive Leisure?

6 | Tuskegee University defends dress code as workplace readiness tool (Eric Mack for Fox News. August 30, 2026.)

‘If you raise the bar, students will reach it,’ Brown told Fox News Digital in an interview.

He’s going against the contemporary college grain (in a good way). Conversely, FIRE, which appears later in the article and was once a valuable nonprofit for defending free speech, has jumped the shark so far that it is now hanging out with the mountain goats.

7 | Italian Carroll Gardens Barely Exists Anymore (Robert Corbett for Curbed. August 31, 2026.)

But the advent of shipping containers, which were too big for the Red Hook port, cost local longshoremen their jobs in the 1960s and ’70s and set off a steady Italian exodus — often to New Jersey, Staten Island, or Queens — that has continued ever since.

There are remnants of Italian Carroll Gardens, but the consistent trend-line is accurately described by the very interesting essay.

8 | Exclusive video of world’s first echidna puggle to be born at a university (James Woodward for NewScientist. August 28, 2026.)

A baby echidna – one of Australia’s egg-laying monotremes – has been born and reared in a university for the first time.

The most important part of this link is the video.

9 | Dear Dad, Send Money: Letters from Students in the Middle Ages (Medievalists.net. August 22, 2026.) (HT Strange Company.)

For parents who have sent their children off to university, the complaints found in these medieval letters may sound surprisingly familiar. Students needed money for books, accommodation, clothing and food, and when their funds ran low, they knew exactly whom to ask for help.

We need to bring back classy solicitations for money.

10 | Why is your mustard spicier than usual? We investigated (Jake Edmiston for Toronto Star. August 22, 2026.) (HT Strange Company.)

For weeks afterward, whenever I opened the fridge, a question gnawed at me: Why is this mustard so spicy?

So began a long research project spanning multiple countries, ultimately resolving with a satisfactory conclusion.

11 | Amid foreign sex tourist rise, Japanese government considering outlawing paying for prostitution (Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. August 25, 2026.)

Under Japan’s current Prostitution Prevention Law, only the selling of intercourse is treated as a criminal act. So if Person A pays Person B for a role in the hay, Person B is looking at up to six months in jail or a fine of up to 20,000 yen (US$125) if they get caught. Meanwhile, Person A hasn’t broken any law, and therefore faces no legal repercussion as long as they didn’t commit any other wrongdoing (such as sex with a minor, coercion, or physical assault).

That sounds like a great way to not prevent prostitution.

12 | My phone number doesn’t work anymore (Joel Chrono. September 4, 2026.)

You see, the silly government of my beautiful country [Mexico] decided that the best way to stop scam, blackmail and other crimes via phone calls would be to force everyone into registering their phone numbers with their ID card and a face scan with the phone’s camera.

This is the first I am reading about Mexico’s anti-phone crime policy. For some of the reasons noted by Joel Chrono, it strikes me as odd.

13 | Canada gave contracts to Iran VP’s son while investigating role in regime missile program (Stewart Bell for Global News. September 2, 2026.)

The Canadian government awarded millions worth of contracts to the son of Iran’s former vice-president, despite an ongoing investigation into allegations he helped the Islamic Republic evade sanctions and develop missile systems, documents obtained by Global News reveal.

Subpar, but on the bright side I don’t think Mr. “Sal Ghafouri” (actual name Mohammad Reza Ghafouri Fard) ended up doing much to change Iran’s military fortunes.

14 | CAIR blamed 9/11 on US support for Israel, recommended bin Laden’s writings in back to school guide (Donee Lewak for the New York Post. August 28, 2026.)

The since-deleted school material — titled ‘Muslim Studies Curriculum’ — said the worst terror attack on American soil was justified because of the US’s ‘support of Israel’ – and blamed America’s involvement in the Persian Gulf War and the ‘vast presence’ of the military across the Middle East.

CAIR reminds us why it is a designated terrorist organization in the UAE.

15 | We’re Living Through Present Collapse (Ethan Strauss. August 24, 2026.)

We are no longer in Present Shock, but instead a Present Collapse. The now has folded into the past, making it difficult to differentiate one from the other. There’s a ‘present’ in the sense that, there are current events. There’s a present discourse in the sense that, certain topics are dominating the conversation. But that conversation might be driven by cynically excavated clips that just happen to draft off what’s trending.

I don’t agree with the context of every particular example, but on the whole this is a very interesting and well-written piece on the phenomenon of news from the past being construed as current on social media.

16 | Welcome to Sports’ Eternal Present (Neil Paine. August 31, 2026.)

But no area may be quite as susceptible to this general phenomenon as sports itself — for the simple reason that, increasingly, the sports past doesn’t even look like it’s from the past anymore.

Following from Mr. Strauss’ article (see the previous link), Neil Paine examined the phenomenon of the past converging with the presence in the context of sports’ HD TV era. This one I agree with, albeit I will note that I did not have an HD TV until 2009.

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 29-September 4 with notes on their cumulative ranking statistics going back to 2021.

1. Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine (NAF. Jan. 21, 2026.) 33 appearances and 14 top placements.

2. Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search (NAF. April 17, 2026.) 36 appearances and 22 top placements in 2026; 62 appearances and 43 top placements overall.

3. How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name (NAF. March 11, 2021.) 18 appearances in 2026; 28 appearances overall.

4. Broken Optical Audio Cable Door “Fix” (NAF. Sep. 16, 2023.) 2 appearances in 2026; 24 appearances overall.

5. Amazon “Cargo Bikes” in Brooklyn (NAF. April 9, 2026.) 16 appearances in 2026; 51 appearances and 8 top placements overall.

This was a heavy-hitter week in the rankings featuring. The top three articles this week are, as of mailing time, the three most-visited articles of 2026 in the order they appear in the weekly ranking. They are joined by 9th and 4th place respectively. As usual, our regular top-two of Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine and Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search lapped the field. They have now alternated in the top position for five consecutive weeks.

Notable Leaf Journal

While I did not publish much last week, I did publish some things related to The New Leaf Journal and The Emu Café Social.

I cleaned up by bot, crawler, and scraper blacklists, which I implement through our sites’ robots.txt files (see https://thenewleafjournal.com/robots.txt and https://social.emucafe.org/robots.txt), and on the server side through .htaccess. I decided to publish the block lists I am maintaining to Codeberg. You can view my blocklists-for-.htaccess-and-robots.txt and consider it instructive for your own projects. I also published my modifications to one section of Jeff Starr’s 8G Firewall to make it conform with my blocklists. I plan to mirror the repository to GitHub and GitLab in the near future, but the Codeberg version will be canonical for the time being.

Also on the subject of bots and scrapers, I implemented some rules for Koko Analytics to keep most archive pages from being tracked as page visits. The reason is that I am reasonably confident most of those visits were not human visitors, so with hope this will lead to my having more accurate total page hit stats for month-to-month comparisons.

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.

While I make no promises regarding the number of new articles this week, I hold out some hope that a reduction in ragweed could increase my output. In the interim, I wish all stateside newsletter readers a happy and restful Labor Day.

Independence Forever!
Nicholas A. Ferrell.