Virid Intro

Welcome to the 302nd 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 am a day late with today’s newsletter. I had a bit of work to do on Friday and then could not quite get myself to finish the draft on time on Saturday. I was then out for most of the day on Sunday and had work on Monday. But we are working toward a perfect year of mailing weekly editions of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, so let us keep the streak going (better late than never).

Leaves From the Week That Was

I published three new articles since mailing Newsletter Leaf Journal 301. I also drafted two articles, but have not had time to publish them yet.

I began the week by sharing My Chickenpox Memories, specifically how I managed to earn my stripes (or pox) just before the vaccine became available.

In my second article of the week, I covered an Inflatable Spooky Halloween Tree in Cobble Hill with both day and night photographs. Come for the tree and stick around for the light-up autumnal crow at night.

Finally, I published a Brooklyn news update in Carroll Gardens Library Set to Reopen 12-01-2026. While this would ordinarily be more of an The Emu Café Social post than NLJ, I had in the previous week covered a Halloween decoration making light of the Library not reopening in 2026, so an update was warranted.

Speaking of ECS, I published daily links for October 11, 2026.

Leaves From Around the Web

While I am one day late in mailing, let no one think that I forgot to collect links from around the web. I present 15 links below with quotes and my link commentary.

Sports

1 | Before Tom Brady Was Great, He Was Good Enough To Win With. Neil Paine. Oct. 14, 2026.

This isn’t to say that Brady was the elite quarterback he would eventually become as a first-year starter in 2001. He finished the year ranked 17th with 68.9 EPA above replacement per 17 team games, sandwiched between past-their-prime versions of Chris Chandler and Mark Brunell. On a per-play basis, his -0.008 EPA/play versus average was almost dead-even with the league mark, ranking 15th out of 35 QBs with at least 150 action plays. But, crucially, he already possessed one of the qualities that made him a winning quarterback: knowing that, sometimes, avoiding the disastrous game matters more than chasing the spectacular one.

I’d argue that this assessment was true to some extent for the entirety of the Patriots’ 2001-04 dynasty.

2 | Sumo Championship League Austin Results and Review. Tim Edwards. Oct. 14, 2026.

I was very happy with the sumo on display at this event. It wasn’t what we see in Grand Sumo, but it was still entertaining and featured some really skilled and passionate guys giving it their all.

I’ll have to make some time to watch the replay between now and grand sumo’s Kyushu Basho next month.

3 | Walt Frazier: A Final Garden Party, 1979. Bob Kuska at From Way Downtown. Sep. 1, 2026. (Re-printing Sep. 13, 1979 article for Cleveland Press.)

For much of the past two years, people have been working on mysteries without any clues as to the whereabouts of one Walt (“I’m no longer Clyde”) Frazier. That he is here is news. It’s a start, a beginning, a jumping-off point, anyway.

Walt “Clyde” Frazier has a fair case for the honor of greatest New York Knicks player (along with Willis Reed and Patrick Ewing), but this article covers his largely forgotten and forgettable final two seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

4 | The Political Lean of Pro Sports. Peter Lutz for VoteHub. January 20, 2026.

Using voter file data from 23 states and the District of Columbia, we’re able to venture into new territory and collect the party identification on 1,506 athletes across the “Big Four” of North American professional sports leagues, plus the WNBA. The analysis that follows reports results by league.

Interesting article, albeit Mr. Lutz’s barely-concealed irritation that a majority of MLB and NHL players may not share his political persuasion is a little bit distracting.

Classic Cinema and Television

5 | Pirating the Pirates. Deavan Scott for MUBI. Sep. 28, 2026.

Publicly accessible versions of major works of cinema are often wholly inadequate for reasons as diverse as the resultant shortcomings. A major studio’s home video arm might “expand” a film, remix a monaural audio track, wipe away digital grain, oversaturate or oversharpen the image, or even change the aspect ratio for the sake of an attractive sticker promising a new-and-improved experience.

An interesting article on the underground “film preservation” community with notes on some of the downsides of “enhancing” the classics.

6 | Why Cleopatra, Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur & Other Hollywood Classics Still Look So Good. Colin Marshall for Open Culture. Oct. 14, 2026.

Cleopatra cost Twentieth Century Fox $44 million, by the studio’s own estimate. That may sound like the budget of one of those genre pictures that winds up going straight to streaming, but if we convert those 1963 dollars into current ones, it comes out to $480 million … And yet, these six decades later, the investment seems to have proven sound.

A sort of movie perspective on my 2022 video game article Video Game Stories and Standing the Test of Time.

7 | ‘This Is A Complete And Total Betrayal Of The Beloved Source Material,’ Say Fans After Seeing New Trailer For ‘Baywatch’. The Babylon Bee. Oct. 14, 2026.

Fandom of a revered intellectual property became outraged this week, as legions of loyal fans bemoaned what they saw as a desecration of their favorite stories after they watched the new trailer for the reboot of Baywatch.

I’m just making sure you’re still paying attention.

Obesity and Weight Loss

8 | Could Universal GLP-1 Drugs End the Obesity Epidemic?. Cermieux. September 28, 2025.

The curious thing is whether there’s a fourth stage. America could be entering the fourth stage right now. Consider that for two consecutive years, obesity has been declining. Speculation about this possible fourth stage has, with good reason, focused largely on pharmacological solutions—chiefly GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs (GLP-1RAs) like Ozempic and Zepbound. But can we use technology to pop the obesity bubble? Can we ‘cure’ the obesity epidemic by getting fat people on drugs like GLP-1RAs?

I’d personally recommend going outside and not eating (or drinking) terribly as plan A. But this checks out on a broader scale.

9 | Harvard Medical School Takes on Weight Loss. Stu Smith for City Journal. Oct. 9, 2026.

Few educational institutions are as prestigious as Harvard Medical School. At its best, the school is a bastion of evidence-based medicine and excellence in human health. It’s hard to square that reputation, however, with a recent panel hosted by HMS and titled “Against the Pathology of Unruly Bodies.” The event encouraged distrust of doctors and cast weight loss—one of the most effective health interventions—as a project of coercion, “eradication,” and fascism.

As I read about this panel, I repeatedly thought to myself, “I am dumber for having read that sentence.” But I persisted.

10 | ‘The next protein’: Fiber is shaping up to be the latest grocery obsession. Laya Neelakandan for CNBC. Dec. 12, 2025.

Still, Kate Pelletier, a registered dietitian nutritionist at the University of Michigan Health, said it’s important to note that fiber is not sufficient as an alternative to GLP-1 drugs, and a balanced plate is the best way to stay healthy.

While I have been accustomed to seeing Ozempic pop up in many articles, my take-away here was “they even managed to sneak it into an article about fiber.”

Animals and Science

11 | Secret of Orange Cats Finally Revealed After 60-Year Search. Tessa Koumoundouros for Science Alert. Oct. 9, 2026.

Orange cats happen to have a hilarious reputation for not being the brightest of their species. Anecdotes aside, such links between kitty coloration and cognition are scientifically unsupported, with no obvious negative consequences from this mutation in health or mental wellbeing.

That’s the most important finding.

12 | Scientists Took a Cheek Swab From the World’s Oldest Tortoise. His DNA Could Reveal Hints to Longevity. Carlyn Kranking for Smithsonian Magazine. Oct. 9, 2026.

The Aldabra giant tortoise is the oldest turtle in recorded history and the world’s oldest living land animal. Caretakers don’t know his exact age, but a photograph from 1882 shows the tortoise looking fully grown, which, for his species, is at least 50 years old. This means that Jonathan would be about 194 today.

194 would have Jonathan hatching during the Andrew Jackson Administration. But if they short by six years, he may have already hatched in time for the American Jubilee.

13 | Bumble bees show spontaneous problem-solving, challenging big-brain assumptions. University of Oulu (edited by Sadie Harley and Robert Egan). June 4, 2026.

In a new study, bumble bees solve a completely novel object-manipulation task. What makes this behavior especially remarkable is that the bees had never been trained. The findings challenge the long-standing assumption that spontaneous problem-solving is restricted to humans and other large-brained vertebrates.

Most important part: There’s video.

Unexpected Finds

14 | Cheapest breakfast in Japan? Hidden find at Japanese supermarket costs less than US$1. Oona McGee for SoraNews24. April 19, 2025.

So when you’re out early in the morning and looking for a solid breakfast, it helps to think like a local. And if you’re a local in the Osaka area, you’ll know that the “Super Tamade” regional-exclusive supermarket chain is the King of cheap deals, and it’s where you can pick up a morning set for the bargain price of 138 yen (US$0.97).

Not quite as cheap as homemade, a great value for pre-made.

15 | Bomb squad confirms live grenades found at Texas estate sale. Molly Wilhelm for Houston Chronicle. Oct. 13, 2026.

A Central Texas resident got an unexpected surprise Monday after buying boxes at an estate sale: live grenades believed to date back to World War II.

Fortunately, he knew what to do when he saw potentially live grenades.

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 October 10-16 with notes on their cumulative ranking statistics going back to 2021.

1. Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine. (NAF. Jan. 21, 2026.) 39 appearances and 19 top-placements.
2. Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search (NAF. April 17, 2025.) 42 appearances and 23 top-placements in 2026; 69 appearances and 44 top-placements overall.
3. How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name (NAF. March 11, 2021.) 24 appearances in 2026; 34 appearances overall.
4. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 – Statistics and Analysis (NAF. Jan. 18, 2022.) 10 appearances in 2026; 73 appearances and 4 top-placements overall.
5. The Dangers in My Heart S1 Anime Review (NAF. Dec. 28, 2023.) 2 appearances in 2026; 3 appearances overall.

My NoAI DuckDuckGo guide regained the top position in the ranking and is now just one top placement aside from becoming the third article to have 20 weekly top placements in a single year, with this week’s runner-up Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search having already cleared the mark in 2025 and 2026. Speaking of milestones, my Pokémon generation 1-2 special split study became the sixth, and quite possibly last, 2026 article to have 10 weekly ranking appearances for the year. Rounding out the ranking was The Dangers in My Heart S1 Anime Review, which now has two of its three all-time appearances in 2026.

Taking Leaf

This concludes my very untimely 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.

While I was late in mailing this newsletter, I look forward to returning to our regular Saturday schedule on the 26th.

Until Newsletter Leaf Journal 303,
Nicholas A. Ferrell.