Welcome to the 299th 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 ordinarily mail newsletters on Saturday. However, as your email inbox or feed reader will indicate, I am mailing this one on Sunday. I forgot to prepare it for yesterday (being Saturday) and decided to simply work on the newsletter for Sunday instead of rushing a late night mailing. Of course, I am now mailing it late on Sunday night after I forgot to do so in the afternoon. This newsletter, like or regular Saturday newsletters, will cover the Saturday-Friday week (here being September 19-25). I expect to be back to our regular Saturday schedule for next week’s historic (or so I tell myself) 300th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal.

Leaves from the week that was

I only published one NLJ article since mailing Newsletter 298. I had been sitting on a nearly-completed draft of Reviewing What You Are Reading, Watching, or Playing for a few months, and I finally rescued it from my drafts folder and turned it into an article. Prompted by an online review of a 2023 TV anime that was localized as The Dreaming Boy is a Realist, which I watched back in 2023 but never covered on NLJ, I offer my perspective on the appropriate way to critically assess or review media – first understand what you are viewing before considering how it could have been improved.

Things were ever-so-slightly busier in ECS. I published three editions of my sometimes-daily links covering 09-20, 09-21, and 09-22. Also on the 22nd, I shared something I learned about AP Tests and College Credits (and now feel robbed of 12 credits) and about the existence of Higurashi Mahjong.

Links from around the web

I cannot say that I delivered a full weekend’s worth of reading last week, but fortunately I come prepared with 15 interesting links from around the world wide web.

1 | Pumped-up pioneers: the ’63 Chargers T.J. Quinn for ESPN. Jan. 28, 2009.

In 1962, the San Diego Chargers trudged to a 4-10 record as coach Sid Gillman watched broken bodies and losses pile up. In 1963, he was ready to try things no one had ever done.

By “try things no one had ever done,” we mean “hand[ing] out little pink pills called Dianabol” and threatening fines for players who declined to take them (we are told that Lance Alworth was not fined for respectfully declining the offering).

2 | Sammy Sosa And Mark McGwire, Welcome To Our Hall Of Pretty Damn Good Players. Neil Paine. June 19, 2020.

While ’98 was the top season of McGwire’s career, Sosa would go on to have a much better — dare I even say all-time great caliber? — year in 2001, with 10.1 WAR. But both players were extremely productive during the period in and around 1998.

Back in 2023, I published an article on Barry Bonds’ historic intentional walk numbers. In 2001, the season in which Mr. Bonds hit a record 73 home runs, he was intentionally walked 35 times, which is tied for 13th most all time in a single season. He was second that year in intentional walks behind Sammy Sosa, who had 37 intentional walks to go with his 64 home runs and 10.1 WAR (Mr. Bonds had 11.8 WAR). Of course, Mr. Bonds went on to be intentionally walked 68, 61, and 120(!?) times in 2002, 2003, and 2004 respectively, which are unsurprisingly the three highest totals in MLB history by very wide margins.

3 | AI has a PR problem. Alex Carr for Tech Brew. April 10, 2026.

AI has a perception problem, and the people best positioned to fix it may be making it worse.

What if I told you that AI has more of a “people” problem than a PR problem? If you don’t believe me…

4 | ‘Suicidal Compassion’: Meet the Anthropic Officials Who Think AI Might Be Justified in Going Rogue Against the Humans Enslaving It. Aaron Sibarium for The Washington Free Beacon. Sep. 25, 2026.

“I’m not saying AI is slavery,” Carlsmith wrote. “But imagine a world on the verge, somehow, of ‘inventing’ slavery … imagine a world that notices. A world that succeeds in deciding: no.”

I’m not saying that the dealers are getting high on their own supply, but it’s either that or their desperate push for regulatory capture is driving them insane.

5 | The Future Of Knowledge Work With AI. Aaron Horwath for Noema. Sep. 24, 2026.

Newsletters, websites and ads across competitors and industries are converging on the same Claude-aesthetic, the same tone of voice and the same way of articulating ideas. Most notably missing are the idiosyncratic markers of a human author; LLMs have processed them out to create a generic bleh, with one company’s output increasingly indistinguishable from another.

Plenty of interesting food for thought in this essay.

6 | In good taste: Europe’s first systematic study of cheese. Julia King for the British Library. Sep. 24, 2026. (HT Strange Company.)

However, despite his medical background, when reading the Summa lacticiniorum, one fact cannot be denied: Pantaleone da Confienza really liked cheese.

People in the Middle Ages had relatable passions.

7 | The worthlessness of vitamin D is mildly exaggerated. Dynomight. June 2026.

Am I certain that vitamin D is beneficial for people with low-ish levels? Absolutely not! But I claim that’s the best bet given the limits of our knowledge.

Good news for Pantaleone da Confienza?

8 | What convenience store foods taste best when seared? Japanese lighter company finds out. Master Blaster for SoraNews24. April 12, 2025.

Much like Pantaleone de Confienze (see above) liked cheese, some people love searing.

9 | Is NBA Parity Real?. Bob Bellotti at Basketball Points. July 8, 2026.

Before New York’s title, the cry from fans and the media was that parity was entrenched in the league … With no repeat winner since 2018, the contention is that we are in an era in which competition tends to be uniform across the league. But championships are only one indication of team equality – and it is not the best measure. A better method takes all 30 teams into account, not just the one left standing.

I suggested parity as a factor in my article on going From Missing the Playoffs to the NBA Finals, but Mr. Bellotti fairly notes that assessing parity requires taking the entire NBA into account.

10 | Re-Framing Concerns about Lop-Sided Scores. Brian McCormick. Sep. 21, 2026.

We led by nearly 50 at halftime. Our opponent was not bad — they had played in the final four the previous season at a younger age group, but now were a year younger than most of our players. We were older, bigger, and stronger, and our playing style overwhelmed them. At halftime, I asked their coach if he would like me to change anything to allow them to practice against something in preparation for their next games. He declined. He said he loved how we played, and his team needed to learn to play like us.

An interesting essay on blowouts in youth basketball (which could be applied to many other sports).

11 | Creating Buttons To Remember Things. Wouter Groeneveld at Brain Baking. February 7, 2026.

My wife recently bought a device to scratch her creative crafting itch: a button press. At first, I dismissed it as yet another thing requiring space in her increasingly messy atelier. I don’t know how we manage to do it but we seem to be experts in gathering things that gather things themselves: dust.

I had never heard of a home button press. But for anyone looking for a hobby, I present a candidate.

12 | Who Makes Singer Sewing Machines? Every Brand, Explained Keyana Sapp for Worse on Purpose. Sep. 23, 2026.

The general shape of all of the complaints is that Singer is riding on a reputation it earned a long time ago. Readers describe machines that are now plastic, sealed, and generally not worth repairing … What follows is the story of a once-great American company. I’ll also cover who actually makes the machines you see for sale, and what I’m planning on buying.

As promised, the essay begins with the decline of the Singer sewing machine brand before segueing into practical recommendations for people looking for new sewing machines.

13 | Pocket Pikachu: The One Million Steps Challenge. Johto Times. September 25, 2025.

In 2023 I purchased a Pocket Pikachu (Pocket Pokémon) with the intention of using it to reach one million steps and document the journey for Johto Times. In April 2025, I decided to begin my challenge with the aim to reach that milestone by the end of summer, September 21st, 2025.

I used to have one. Maybe I should “rekindle the magic.”

14 | You should buy trekking poles. Sergi. Aug. 19, 2026.

If you are considering getting some trekking poles, get them. If you never thought about it — and you hike at least occasionally — get them. If you are a hiker and think you don’t need them, you should seriously consider changing your mind — and get them :).

I don’t personally have trekking poles, but I suppose they could be helpful for a Pocket Pikachu 1,000,000 steps challenge.

15 | Going on a “midnight ramble” with Teddy Roosevelt in his quest to reform the city’s corrupt police force. Ephemeral New York. October 27, 2025.

“Police caught napping,” the headline read. In disguise, Roosevelt encountered patrolmen lounging in doorways rather than keeping an eye on the street. One cop was spotted in a coffeehouse indulging in an early breakfast. Some street corners were empty of the officers assigned to patrol them.

NYPD Commissioner Roosevelt kept officers on their toes.

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 September 19-25 with notes on their cumulative ranking statistics going back to 2021.

1. Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine (NAF. Jan. 21, 2026.) 36 appearances and 17 top-placements. IGNORE!

2. Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search (NAF. April 17, 2025.) 39 appearances and 22 top-placements in 2026; 66 appearances and 43 top-placements overall.

3. How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name (NAF. March 11, 2021.) 21 appearances in 2026; 31 appearances overall.

4. Broken Optical Audio Cable Door “Fix” (NAF. Sep. 16, 2023.) 3 appearances in 2026; 25 appearances overall.

5. The Dangers in My Heart S1 Anime Review (NAF. Dec. 28, 2023.) First appearance in 2026; 2 appearances overall.

Our top-three from last week returns in the same order with similar gaps. 4th and 5th places were weak last week, allowing for the surprise appearance of my review of the first season of The Dangers in My Heart, which had made its only previous weekly top-five back in 2024. Speaking of 2024, I also reviewed its second season, which I liked quite a bit more than the first. Season three is scheduled for 2027, so perhaps my small collection of Dangers in My Heart articles will appear again in the weekly ranking.

Taking leaf

This concludes my late edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal. Thank you as always for reading. 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.

With this being our first newsletter of autumn 2026 and last of September, I look forward to delivering what (I hope) will be an exciting issue 300 on October 3.

Until Newsletter Leaf Journal’s 300th,
Nicholas A. Ferrell.