Leafy Canopy

Welcome to the 306th 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 drafted several articles last week. Unfortunately for last week, I only published two on NLJ. That may be good for next week, but for now we will have to make do with what we have.

Leaves from the week that was

I published three new NLJ articles since mailing Newsletter 305.

I began the week with On AI Disclosure Policies For Games, where I gently addressed Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney’s inane take against requiring (or even encouraging) generative AI-use disclosures for game developers.

On November 4, 2026, San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama had a historic 52 point, 24 rebound, and 8 block performance. I read an article about the game by Neil Paine and decided to conduct a statistical survey in Minute Totals in Best NBA Game Score Performances. I also published a companion article with additional facts I noticed while researching my NLJ article. See Facts About Best NBA Game Score Performances on ECS.

Finally, I published Setting Up fediverse:creator Tags With The SEO Framework. This one is mainly for WordPress admins who also have Mastodon profiles, but I wrote the article with enough background information for the curious.

I had a solid week of publishing on ECS. To begin, I published daily links posts on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. In addition those and my aforementioned ECS article on NBA Game Score facts…

• RSS Used in a Non-tech Quip (RSS used as a punchline in a commentary article.)

• Random Endpoint Coming in WordPress 7.2 (Thoughts on a new, potentially unwanted addition, to the WordPress core.)

• Open Source Tools Behind ECS (Inspired by a UK law firm, I shared some open source tools behind ECS.)

• World’s Largest Artificial Reefs (On the new, and previous, largest artificial reefs.)

• Checking in on the Kyushu Basho Through Day 4 (Revisiting my pre-tournament predictions after day four of the Kyushu Basho.)

Between NLJ and ECS, I dare say I covered a good amount of ground.

Leaves From Around the Web

While I ended up publishing a nice variety of new articles on ECS, and NLJ has a along read for visual novel fans, my output is hardly sufficient for a dedicated reader. Thus, I present 15 links from around the world wide web, with quotes and commentary.

Armistice/Veterans Day II

1 | Listen to the Moment the Guns Fell Silent, Ending World War I. Jason Daley for Smithsonian Magazine. Nov. 9, 2018.

Using that info, they recreated the sound of the last minutes of battle, but they also wanted visitors to feel what the moment was like. To that end, they also created a soundbar. Visitors to the exhibit lean their elbows on the bar and place their hands on their ears. The sound is then conducted through their arms to their skulls where they can both hear and feel the moment.

An attempt to recreate the sound of the final minute of the First World War.

2 | Classic toy soldiers get an American-made revamp honoring real veterans. Sophia Compton for Fox Business. Nov. 11, 2026.

Little green army men have been a staple of American childhoods for generations, but one entrepreneur is giving the classic toy a new mission by turning real U.S. military veterans into plastic figures made entirely in America.

That’s a winning toy idea.

3 | ‘An end to this long journey’: Veterans, families welcome long-awaited Gulf War memorial to nation’s capital. Linda F. Hersey for Stars and Stripes. Oct. 24, 2026.

A dedication ceremony for the Desert Shield and Desert Storm Memorial on the National Mall marked the formal opening of the landmark and its official induction into the National Park System.

See also an argument by Tobias Neagele for Air & Space Forces Magazine that it should be improved to better “celebrate the enduring truths that enabled victory: The power of strategic targeting, the value and utility of airpower, and the advantage of high-speed maneuver.”

Haiti and El Salvador

4 | Nayib Bukekle Destroys Haitian Gang Headquarters Identified on X Community Notes. Christian K. Caruzo for Breitbart. Nov. 10, 2026.

The military operation shown by Bukele comes less than a week after the Salvadoran president “crowdsourced” open-source intelligence (OSINT) through social media to ask the exact GPS coordinates of a house in Haiti attributed to the deadly gang. On November 6, President Bukele wrote in Haitian Creole, “Where is this house? Give us the exact address, and we will destroy it”…

I saw Mr. Bukekle’s request before learning about the outcome. Now one may think that I would be a skeptic of El Salvador’s intervention in Haiti in light of my documented skepticism of past ideas such as sending Kenyan police officers (see e.g., Newsletters 156 and 212) and broader UN projects (see Newsletter 221), but…

5 | El Salvador Finds ‘Several Human Skulls’ in Haitian Soccer Stadium Liberated From Gangs. Christian K. Caruzo for Breitbart. Nov. 13, 2026.

On Thursday, President Bukele detailed in a social media post written in Haitian Creole that the joint operation took place as part of the bilateral agreement between the Haitian and Salvadoran governments. It reportedly involved the Haitian National Police (PNH), the Haitian Armed Forces (FAd’H), the Task Force private security group serving the Haitian government, and Salvadoran Special Forces — all of whom successfully took control and secured the Stade Sylvio Cator stadium.

…This is probably the best you’re going to get as far as Haiti interventions go. Carry on.

Dueling

6 | Samurai Gangsters. Patrick Parr for The Washington Free Beacon. Oct. 25, 2026.

The wound was also seen as a source of earned pride: “since fingers were often the first part of the body to be struck in a duel or sword fight, a missing fingertip suggested an experienced swordsman.”

But as the Oracle of Delphi once said about mark indicia of experienced Japanese swordsmen: “Nothing in excess, lest you can no longer hold a sword.”

7 | Man arrested for violating Japan’s anti-dueling law in downtown Tokyo. Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. Jan. 10, 2026.

[I]n 1889, the Japanese government had to officially codify a law, called the “Act Concerning the Criminality of Dueling,” telling people they were not allowed to duel each other. You’d think 137 years would be enough time for that message to seep in, but apparently it wasn’t…

O tempora! O mores! Back in my day they just played Yu-Gi-Oh! (Note I didn’t play Yu-Gi-Oh and don’t recall knowing anyone who did, but I nevertheless stand by my quip.)

Christianity in the Far East

8 | Eight Things to Know About Christians in China. Mariam Wahba and Samuel Ben-Ur for FDD. Dec. 24, 2025.

The latest wave of religious repression in China represents the most aggressive internal clampdowns in years. Catholic bishops appointed by the Vatican have been disappeared, despite a deal allegedly giving the Vatican input in proposing Chinese bishops. Protestant house churches face constant surveillance and sweeping raids. New religious regulations give Chinese police increased power to monitor speech, belief, and religious thought.

Starting to think the People’s Republic of China is not the best place to be a practicing Christian.

9 | ‘Love transcends death’: How Singapore’s Chinese Catholics remember their dead. Benedict Tang for EWTN. Nov. 2, 2026.

Such wakes show how Chinese and Catholic customs around death sit side by side, said Bryan Goh, a historian at the National University of Singapore who studies the history of Christianity in insular Southeast Asia.

Ritual in Singapore.

Purdue Basketball Legends

10 | Terry Dischinger: Two Toots for ‘Terrible Terry,’ 1964. Bob Kuska at From Way Downtown. Nov. 17, 2025. (re-printing chapter from Bikk Mokray’s Basketball Stars (1964))

Dischinger had one of the great college basketball careers of all time at Perdue (which included a place on the Gold Medal-winning 1960 Olympic Team as a sophomore), a nine year NBA career (including a Rookie of the Year award) broken up by a two-year stint serving in Vietnam, and a long post-basketball career as an orthodontist. Passed away in 2023 at the age of 82. No doubt a life well-lived.

A college basketball legend at Purdue, Vietnam War veteran, fine NBA player (his prime was interrupted by his military service), and orthodontist. A life well-lived indeed.

11 | Rick Mount: Back from Oblivion, 1972. Bob Kuska at From Way Downtown. Nov. 13, 2026. (Re-printing several articles about from 1970-72).

For Mount, the pre-draft conversation meandered in several directions, good and bad. But Mount’s pro prospects seemed to take a promising turn in March 1970 when he signed with the ABA Indiana Pacers. Mount seem destined to be the face of the Pacers in seasons to come, since he ranked as one of the Hoosier State’s favorite basketball folk heroes. Mount also seemed to be a perfect fit for the ABA.

Terry Dischinger, followed by Dave Schellhase, put Purdue basketball on the map in the 1960s, but Rick Mount, who had been the first high school athlete to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, capped off the decade by leading Purdue to new heights. As Mr. Kuska’s contemporaneous article collection reveals, Mr. Mount’s professional career did not match his storied amateur career, but he nevertheless accrued some accomplishments as a pro.

Culture

12 | Uzbekistan’s chess juggernaut wins again. Now it’s making moves toward world championship. Alexander Thompson for Eurasianet. Oct. 28, 2026.

Uzbekistan’s national chess team cruised to its second gold medal at the FIDE Chess Olympiad in Samarkand in late September, losing only one of 11 matches. It was yet another sign of Uzbekistan’s remarkable rise to the top of world chess since the Covid pandemic.

Learn about Uzbekistan’s emergence as a chess superpower.

13 | Opera Must Be Restored–But How?. Arthur Schaper for American Greatness. Oct. 17, 2026.

The art form must be preserved and promoted. But how?

Mr. Schaper offers a short essay with his ideas.

Challenges

14 | Building and running Linux off a Floppy Disk with Floppinux. Andrea at 82MHz. December 14, 2025.

Thanks to a recent YouTube video by Action Retro I found the perfect project to get into this sort of thing: Floppinux, a tutorial to create a working Linux distro of sorts that can boot from a single floppy disk and can run on hardware as low spec as a 33 MHz 486 CPU.

But do the floppy drivers work on Floppy Linux?

15 | I Recruited Lilith in Tales of Destiny. Takafumi at Pls no Hate. Nov. 2, 2026.

There was one character in Tales of Destiny who really wanted to join you on your journey: the protagonist’s sister. Sadly, she wasn’t destined to join her brother as a hero. Even so, fans have taken to cheating or abusing glitches in order to kinda make her a part of the journey. It seemed that, at some point, she was intended to be a party member, but whatever process it took to recruit her and whatever quests she may have had were erased from the game during development… But 29 years after that development wrapped up, a long-established fansite has discovered a way to trigger her official recruitment quest, which actually exists, apparently!

So began his long, convoluted journey…

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 31-November 6 with notes on their cumulative ranking statistics going back to 2021.

1. Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine. (NAF. Jan. 21, 2026.) 43 appearances and 23 top-placements.

2. Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search (NAF. April 17, 2025.) 46 appearances and 23 top-placements in 2026; 73 appearances and 44 top-placements overall.

3. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 – Statistics and Analysis (NAF. Jan. 18, 2022.) 13 appearances in 2026; 76 appearances and 4 top placements overall.

4. On AI Disclosure Policies For Games (NAF. Nov. 7, 2026.) First appearance.

5. How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name (NAF. March 11, 2021.) 27 appearances in 2026; 37 appearances overall.

Analysis

Overall recorded site visits were up last week, although we did not have a particularly strong top-five. Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine has now tied Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search for the most top placements in 2026. Of course, these two articles have all 46 top-placements in 2026 between them… My new article on AI disclosure policies made a debut week top-five, bringing us to 52 articles to have made a weekly ranking in 2026. That matches our record for most weekly ranking articles from 2025.

Taking Leaves

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 expect to be a bit busy with work until Wednesday at least, I have a number of draft articles in the pipeline, so I expect to have more to share in next week’s edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal.

Until November 21,
Nicholas A. Ferrell.