May 27, 2023

Newsletter Journal CXXXVII 〜 crimson[ewsletter]ess 〜

The 137th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal features the newest New Leaf Journal articles (including Brooklyn Bridge history and a visual novel review), links from around the web, and other news and notes from the week that was at The New Leaf Journal.

Welcome to the 137th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perenially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. This newsletter comes to you as always from the waterproof keyboard of the editor of The New Leaf Journal, Nicholas A. Ferrell.

We published some interesting articles and short posts during the last week. We also added a new section to The New Leaf Journal. We will recap all of that below along with interesting links from around the web and other news and notes.

Table of contents

• Leaves from the week that was
• Leaves from around the web
• The Old Leaf Journal
• Most-turned leaves of the newsletter week
• News leaf journal
• Notable leaf journal
• Taking leaf

Leaves from the week that was

I published five regular articles and eight short posts since mailing Newsletter 136. I also added one "Collection" post, but I will recap that in our News Leaf Journal section.

Regular articles

• My great deep sea expectations
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 20, 2023.

  If you do not find the photo you are looking for in one news article, find another news article on the same story.

• Substack Notes' Twitter clone war
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 23, 2023.

  If it looks like a Twitter...

• 1883 Opening of the Brooklyn Bridge
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 24, 2023.

  I celebrated the 140th anniversary of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge by reviewing numerous original accounts of the opening ceremonies on May 24, 1883.

• Crimsoness -- Visual Novel Review
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 25, 2023.

  I resumed by al|together visual novel review project with a review that I had been looking forward to -- a game where a schoolgirl turns her rage from a mistake on her exam to destroying the entire planet in 3 minutes.

• Squirrel without French fry in Manhattan
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 26, 2023.

  That I missed a photo to document a story did not stop me from sharing the story with an unrelated photo.

Leaflets and Leaf Buds

• Good ending theme for ep 6 of Raeliana (Reviewing a good special ending sequence for episode 6 of the currently airing anime series, Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion)
• Dramatic increase in Chinese nationals at border (As I note, it makes sense in light of the fact that one can travel straight from China to Mexico and then to the U.S.-Mexico border)
• Thoughts: Porn Hub blocks access in Utah ("Oh no..." he said in a monotone)
• Shocker: Cats don't like being studied in labs (Revelations from a science article...)
• Praising UpdraftPlus for WP Backups (On a good WordPress backup plugin)
• Uzbek snap elections and presidential term limits (Thoughts on staying in power)
• Webmentions and Substack (I cast my vote for Substack to add Webmention support -- but no one is tabulating my vote)
• Misguided parking ticket-income idea (I offer a better idea)

Leaves from around the web

Let's check in on what is happening around the world wide web...

• Today in History - May 30 (Memorial Day)
  Library of Congress.

  A brief history of Memorial Day.

• Was This Couple Married 0, 1, or 2 Times?
  Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy. May 17, 2023.

  (Zero).

• Why Indiana Limestone Is One of America's Most Prized Building Materials
  Jacqueline Kehoe for Smithsonian Magazine. May 17, 2023.

  Looks aesthetic.

• The Worst Maritime Disaster in U.S. History
  Erika L. Jenns for Indiana University's Lilly Library. April 27, 2015.

  "April 27, 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of the explosion and subsequent sinking of the steamboat Sultana. Death toll estimates range from 1,700 to 1,800 people, making the wreck of the Sultana one of the worst shipwrecks in American history. The number of lives lost far exceeds the death toll from the sinking of the Titanic, which killed 1,512 people; yet, few have even heard of the Sultana shipwreck."

• Heroic fisherman who caught PM Kishida’s attacker now a fashion icon
  Master Blaster for SoraNews24. April 18, 2023.

  Once the dust settled and the Japanese Prime Minister was confirmed safe, we could move on to more pressing matters (it's a nice vest).

• Ancient crystal-filled rock has been hiding dinosaur secret for 140 years
  Sascha Pare for LiveScience. April 5, 2023.

  Some people cannot hide a secret for 140 seconds. Job well done, crystal-filled rock, job well done.

• How France Failed Mali: the End of Operation Barkhane
  Isabelle King for Harvard International Review. January 30, 2023.

  To be fair to France, there's a great deal of failure to go around in Mali over the last decade and change.

• Shepherd's Crossing, Success' Answer To Harvest Moon, Gets Western Switch Release
  Alana Hagues. June 13, 2023.

  Looks intriguing. Maybe I will try it.

• ‘It’s called stealing’: new allegations of plagiarism against Roy Lichtenstein
  Dalya Alberge for The Guardian. April 9, 2023.

  (1) Takes a look; (2) Yup...

• Uzbekistan orphanage sex abuse scandal stirs fury
  Eurasianet. April 3, 2023.

  A horrifying scandal prompted much needed legal reforms which, for whatever it is worth, look promising on the surface (I suppose that proof will be in the actual enforcement of the new laws). The reform effort was apparently led by Ms. Saida Mirziyoyeva, daughter of the president Mr. Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who asI reported in a Leaflet (see above) will be extending his rule next month.

• Another COVID Fail: School Budget Cliffs With Gaping Holes
  Steve Miller for Real Clear Investigations. April 4, 2023.

  You have to be a true government genius to understand that the best thing to do with one-time relief funds is to put them toward more-than-one-time long-term financial commitments.

• Nancy Lasselle’s Washington Novels
  Matthew Willis for JSTOR Daily. April 7, 2023.

  A look at the author behind several 19th century political novels set iin Washington D.C. I discussed this post indirectly in a Leaf Bud on the name Hyacinth.

The Old Leaf Journal

Let's dig into our archive...

• Remembering Second Lieutenant Carleton Burr for Memorial Day
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 25, 2020.

  "In the land he loved next to his own he will always lie, content that he gave his all to a cause that was so near to his heart. On that day the bells throughout America were joyfully ringing to proclaim the turn of the German tide."

• Memorial Flowers -- 1880 Memorial Day Poem
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 25, 2022.

  "For we'll give them only the colors they loved / The red and the white and the blue."

• "Memorial Day" by Helen Leah Reed
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 30, 2022.

  A relatively substantial 1895 Memorial Day poem accented by my 2007 picture of an American Flag against the backdrop of the Brooklyn Bridge.

• Constantine and the Last Vespers at Hagia Sophia
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. July 14, 2020.

  "Constantine for the last time went to the great church, and there, before all the bishops, asked the pardon of all whom he had wronged. Then he received his last communion. For the last time the Holy Sacrifice was offered in S. Sophia, and then the last of the Cæsars and his nobles went forth to die."

• The Brooklyn Bridge's Mysterious Cobweb Lane
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. August 6, 2021.

  Wherein I discuss a fun 1895 essay about walking across the Brooklyn Bridge.

• The Brooklyn Tree Watersprouts Leaf in May
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 25, 2021.

  What is The Old Leaf Journal if not for sharing timely old photo posts that would otherwise be difficult to discover?

Most-turned leaves of the newsletter week

I list our most-read articles from the previous newsletter week (Friday to Saturday) in each edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal. These statistics come courtesy of Koko Analytics, our local, privacy friendly page-counting solution (see my review). Below, I present the 5 most-visited articles of the 21st newsletter week of 2023.

1. Peekier Search Engine Review (NAF: 2.26.22)
   2023 Appearances: 14
   Top Placements: 3
2. The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei (NAF: 3.14.21)
   2023 Appearances: 21
   Top Placements: 5
3. Biden, Lincoln, and Counting Back From the President's Birth (NAF: 4.29.22)
   2023 Appearances: 5
   Top Placements: 1
4. Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage (NAF: 2.3.23)
   2023 Appearances: 16
   Top Placements: 11
5. Heights in “The Dangers of My Heart” Anime (NAF: 4.2.23)
   2023 Appearances: NEW

My review of a now-dead search tool (Peekier) returned to the top spot in the ranking, taking the crown for the third week out of four and doing so relatively comfortably. Last week's top article, my Presidential birth survey, returned to the third spot behind my post on the history of "tsuki ga kirei" -- which made its 109th consecutive top five going back to 2021. Speaking of streams, my Fire Emblem Engage article, although diminished from its best performance earlier in 2023, continued its streak of making the top five in every one of its full weeks online.

This week's notable entry is a short leaflet that I wrote about a dramatic height difference between the two main characters of a currently airing anime called The Dangers of My Heart -- it is an unusual difference in anime terms because the dramatically taller party is the girl. I was prompted to write the Leaflet because I saw the first episode almost right after I hit publish on an article about height differences in anime romances. Naturally, the short post has been far more successful than the longer post thus far (it is on pace for a high May 2023 ranking). This also marks the first appearance for a short-format post (Leaflet or Leaf Bud) in a 2023 weekly top five.

News leaf journal

I debuted a new custom post type called Collection. Collection posts will be short articles dedicated to providing links to New Leaf Journal series or related posts. You will be able to find all Collections on our hub page, which is accessible from our main menu. Our first (and as of May 27, 2023, only) Collection covers my articles about the al|together visual novel translations (see collection). I will gradually grow our collection of collections and make them easy to find on The New Leaf Journal.

Notable leaf journal

I promote our RSS, ATOM, and JSON feeds, and encourage readers to try using them to follow The New Leaf Journal and the instant newsletter. WordPress guru and developer Jeff Starr recently published a blog post on combining categories via URL with a + symbol. I did not know that this was possible. Unsurprisingly, I did not know that you can also use this technique to create category feeds. While I doubt that this will be particularly useful for reading The New Leaf Journal, I figured some readers may be interested in testing some novel category queries. You can read Mr. Starr's guide here.

Taking leaf

Thank you as always for reading and following The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you enjoyed the newsletter and are not already a regular reader, you can sign up for our newsletter via email, add our newsletter's RSS feed to your favorite feed reader (no sign-up required in that case), or read the syndicated version of the newsletter on The New Leaf Journal on Mondays. See our full slate of options here.

I wish all of our American readers a relaxing and contemplative Memorial Day as we honor those American soldiers, sailors, and airmen who died in battle.

For all newsletter readers, I look forward to reporting on all of the interesting goings on next Saturday as the calendar turns from May to June.

Until June 2,

Cura ut valeas.