Virid intro

Welcome to the 303rd 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 mailed last week’s edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal on Monday instead of Saturday. But today we return with a timely Saturday edition of what I trust is your favorite newsletter.

Leaves from the week that was

I published three new NLJ articles since mailing Newsletter 302. All three were short photo posts. First, I published Inflatable Jack-‘o-lanterns (Deflated and Inflated) Seen in Cobble Hill, which comes as advertised with deflated and inflated views of a happy Jack-’o-lantern family. Next, I published Carroll Gardens Halloween Window Ghost and GIF. This article revisits an inflatable “window ghost” that I had documented back in 2024 in the day-time. The ghost is back in 2026 (as it was in 2025). This time, I captured it when it shines (literally) brightest at night. Finally, in The Eyes of October in Brooklyn, I documented three (non-rotting) pumpkins with eyes and eye balloons. I have a few more Halloween photo posts planned for the next week, but I hope to also have time to publish something more substantive.

Leaves from around the web

Unfortunately, I did not publish anything on ECS last week, but I look forward to returning to my short-form writing project in the coming week.

Uniforms and Logos

While I think I covered Brooklyn Halloween decorations last week, my word count was arguably lacking. Fortunately, I came up with 15 links to words published around the web for your weekend reading enjoyment.

1 | Episode 20. Pistons Horsepower Rebrand. Tom O’Grady at The Authentic Voice of Sports Branding. August 13, 2025.

The Year is 1995 … [I]n Detroit, one of basketball’s proudest franchises, the team has been stuck in brand neutral—its once-formidable image now a staid relic of a bygone era. The Detroit Pistons are in need of more than a brand tweak… they need a branding makeover.

This article covers the 1996 re-branding of the NBA’s Detroit Pistons. I previously covered the 2003-04 NBA Champion Detroit Pistons, but they had by then re-re-branded to a much less mid-90s aesthetic.

2 | Episode 32. Sixers are Back in Black, Finally! Sports Branding. December 16, 2025.

Episode 32 of the Sports Branding Substack takes us back to 1997 for one of boldest, most rebellious, and perfectly “Philly” projects EVER when the Sixers ditched the red-white-and-blue overly patriotic branding and embraced a brash menacing black, gold, silver, red, and blue identity built for a tough team in a tough town… Philadelphia!

I dare say the Sixers black and gold was the defining “branding” of the immediate post-Bulls Dynasty era (but their current, more traditional Sixers jerseys, look snazzy too).

3 | Oh No: Atlanta Falcons Announce Surprise Game In Paris. The Babylon Bee. October 23, 2026.

“We’re in trouble,” said local man Olivier Richard. “The way they planned this game and made the announcement, it was lightning fast. I don’t think we’ll be able to hold out for long.”

Just making sure you’re paying attention.

Lost and Found

4 | Tiny possum and glider thought extinct for 6,000 years found in remote West Papua. Lana Lam for BBC. March 6, 2026.

A tiny possum with one extra-long finger on each hand is one of two species thought to have been extinct that have been discovered in West Papua, in what’s been called an “exceptional” scientific discovery … The other is a a ring-tailed glider with a tail that can grasp branches. Both have been found living in remote rainforests after they were thought to have disappeared 6,000 years ago.

The photographic evidence is consistent with the descriptions.

5 | Roman gold wedding ring found in Bulgaria. The History Blog. December 8, 2025.

A gold wedding ring from the Roman era has been discovered in the ancient city of Bononia (modern-day Vidin) in Bulgaria. It weighs a hefty 26.63 grams and dates to the second half of the 2nd century A.D.

Gold is forever.

6 | Thirty lines of the “Physica” of Empedocles found in a Cairo papyrus. Roger Pearse. April 20, 2026.

The news this week, that thirty lines of the Physica (Φυσικά, On Nature) of Empedocles have been found in a papyrus held in Cairo, is exciting for everyone interested in ancient literature.

The papyrus was purchased by an archaeologist in 1904, but its mysteries remained hidden for a good while longer.

7 | Cuban Found Floating Off Coast of Florida on Foam ‘Raft’ Says He Got Lost, Wasn’t Trying to Emigrate. Frances Martel for Breitbart. October 19, 2026.

Fishing is largely illegal in Cuba. The Communist Party heavily regulates any activity that could result in Cubans accessing food, particularly farming and fishing, so the practice is largely limited to tourist recreational fishermen and Party elites.

I found the buried lede.

Drugs

8 | Underage reporter offered ‘gas station heroin’ kratom in NYC smoke shops without having to show ID. Sidney Biasco and Sonya Gugliara for the New York Post. October 10, 2026.

Post scribe Sidney Blasco, 20, found the drug at 18 smoke shops along 8th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen — and only nine bothered to ask her to show a valid form of identification.

I appreciated that the Post sent an authentic under-21 year old instead of someone pretending to be under 21.

9 | Kratom Is Unsafe in Any Form. States Should Act Now to Ban It.. Kevin Sabet for City Journal. October 23, 2026.

The good news is that states don’t have to wait on Washington. They can act on their own to ban kratom now—as several have already done.

There’s a kratom shop across the street from Brooklyn Borough Hall, so let it be noted for your elucidation that New York is not one of the states he is referencing.

Eurasia

10 | Azerbaijan’s hijab ban has infuriated Turkey. David Thorpe for The Spectator. October 14, 2026.

Yet, a rift is now brewing between the two brotherly Muslim countries [Azerbaijan and Turkey] – over hijabs. Last month, the Azerbaijani government imposed restrictions in schools that ‘do not correspond to the principle of secular general education,’ effectively banning headscarves worn by schoolgirls.

Turkey can be a difficult sibling.

11 | Memoir: Remembering 9/11 Coalition and creation of Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan. John O’Keefe for Eurasianet. March 27, 2026.

When 9/11 terror attacks occurred, our security focus shifted to Afghanistan and the surrounding nations. Kyrgyzstan’s southern border is 125 miles from Afghanistan. We needed air bases for operations. You don’t flip a switch and get an agreement. It takes lots of patient and consistent work.

The story from the then-U.S. Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan.

Disc Media

12 | Beauty in DVD Menus. Declan Chidlow at Vale.Rocks. October 6, 2026.

However, once DVD became widespread, publishers started to really embrace the capabilities the format afforded them. The format first released in late 1996; however it wasn’t until the 2000s that they really kicked off. With the medium’s strengths and foibles known, players widely adopted, and technology ready to handle the task, DVDs hit their stride. With this came some brilliant and memorable menus.

All of my Disney movies were VCR, so I missed the Disney DVD menus and quirks he references.

13 | Tech Flashback: HD-DVD – A Format Abandoned Soon After Birth. Grough Lui. January 25, 2026.

While Blu-ray famously won the high-definition format war, its main rival HD DVD certainly didn’t go down without a fight.

Blu-Ray won the battle but I dare say it now faces its own challenges.

Sports Journalism

14 | We Don’t Need Newsbreakers. Owen Phillips at The F5. April 2, 2025.

Imagine a world where the biggest newsbreaker in the world simply picked up and left. Would you ever think about him again aside from when he’s hawking his used iPhones?

A fair critique of the “instant breaking news” genre of sports journalism.

15 | ‘I’m Not Going to Have Blood on My Hands’. Danny Funt for Columbia Journalism Review. October 14, 2026.

A few weeks after my last day, a former coworker sent me a link to ESPN’s website. They had posted an interactive gambling story—a primer on how to gamble on sports. I opened it and it literally made me sick to my stomach. The animations are bouncy and bright; it’s pretty much made for kids.

ESPN’s relationship with gambling is indeed subpar.

Most-turned leaves from the newsletter week

1. Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine. (NAF. Jan. 21, 2026.) 40 appearances and 20 top-placements.

2. Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search (NAF. April 17, 2025.) 43 appearances and 23 top-placements in 2026; 70 appearances and 44 top-placements overall.

3. How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name (NAF. March 11, 2021.) 25 appearances in 2026; 35 appearances overall.

4. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 – Statistics and Analysis (NAF. Jan. 18, 2022.) 11 appearances in 2026; 74 appearances and 4 top-placements overall.

5. Using a Small Paper Clip as SIM Tray Tool (NAF. Oct. 5, 2025.) 2 appearances in 2026 and overall.

Analysis

We had our weakest week of 2026, albeit it would have still been a strong week by ordinary pre-2026 standards. While our standard top-two lapped the field as usual, both articles had unusually weak weeks, and 5th place on the weekly ranking had the lowest ranking visitor count of the year. Our overall search engine stats seem steady enough, but I dare say for “popularity” purposes I should work on some of my more potentially attention-grabbing essays and reviews.

News leaf journal (PHP edition)

I assume that many readers read about the critical vulnerability in PHP that was made public (to the best of my knowledge) on October 21, 2026. WordPress, which powers both NLJ and ECS (as well as much of the web), uses PHP.

I became aware of the PHP vulnerability on October 21, 2026, when I read an advisory from the U.S. National Security Agency. The update recommended taking PHP sites offline until an update is available.

I do not write often about my hosting set-up, but the situation today is more or less the same as it was back when I covered the matter in Newsletter 69. Both NLJ and ECS exist on a VPS from Hetzner, and I use Cloudron to manage the server and both WordPress installs. Because I rely on Cloudron, I checked whether there was an update available when I read the NSA alert. At the moment I checked, Cloudron was still working on updating PHP in its packaged apps, including WordPress.

I briefly checked the NLJ logs and saw quite a few entries that appeared to be from potentially malicious scanners. Because neither NLJ nor ECS are mission critical in that no one is depending on them being online, I decided to briefly suspend both sites while waiting for a Cloudron update. In the interim, I quickly checked to confirm that nothing appeared to be amiss on my server. Not long after I suspended the apps, Cloudron pushed its updates for the WordPress-Developer package I use for both NLJ and ECS, so I re-activated the apps, updated, and they have been online since. On the off-chance anyone reading this newsletter had part of their Wednesday afternoon ruined by the NLJ and ECS downtime, you now know why.

I conclude with a hat tip to Cloudron for their tireless work in pushing the necessary PHP update ASAP.

Taking leaf

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 am not sure how much I will be able to publish in the next week due to pending work assignments, but I have a few articles in the pipeline to go with some Halloween photo posts for the final week of October. Speaking of Halloween, Newsletter 304 will be our first-ever Halloween newsletter. Halloween last fell on Saturday in 2020, but the Newsletter was on hiatus from September 26, 2020 through December 5 of the same.

Until Halloween,
Nicholas A. Ferrell.