November 26, 2022

Newsletter Leaf Journal CXI 〜 Thankful newsletter

The 111th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal recaps the three newest articles at The New Leaf Journal along with other news and notes from around the web.

Welcome to the 111th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of 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. I hope that all of our American readers had a happy and healthy Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving week was a bit slow in terms of publishing, but the articles that we did publish were substantive. We will review our own content, links from around the web, and other news and notes below.

Table of contents

1. Leaves from the week that was
2. Leaves from around the web
3. The Old Leaf Journal
4. Most-turned leaves of the week
5. News leaf journal
6. Notable leaf journal
7. Taking leaf

1. Leaves from the week that was

While I only published three articles since the last newsletter, we had a productive week. Firstly, the third article was one of the longest articles we have published (at least in the top-10). Secondly, I drafted two visual novel reviews from my ongoing project, but they were not quite ready for publication yet.

• Calvin Coolidge’s 1923 Thanksgiving Proclamation
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 21, 2022.

  Having already covered a few Calvin Coolidge speeches, I thought that it would be altogether fitting and proper to discuss one of his Thanksgiving Proclamations. I chose his first, 1923, because it was the most robust of the six that Coolidge issued during his presidency.

• Lateral thinking to extend game console life-cycles
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 22, 2022.

  I examined how one of Nintendo’s corporate philosophies can be applied to extending the life-cycle of game consoles and other tech hardware.

• History of Thanksgiving Proclamations in the Philippines
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 23, 2022.

  In our feature article of the week, I wrote a comprehensive history of Thanksgiving Proclamations in the Philippines, starting with the Commonwealth period in 1935 and ending with the last “National Thanksgiving Day” proclamation of the Marcos dictatorship (1984).

I also published two Leaflets.

• Writing strong female characters
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 22, 2022.

  Assessing quotes from two actresses on what it really means to write a strong, distinctively feminine, female character.

• The rewards of “little” effort
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 23, 2022.

  My thoughts on the success (in terms of visitors) of my specious review of a religious conversion book that I received via unsolicited direct mail in August.

2. Leaves from around the web

Let’s see what’s happening around the web…

• Strong and Weak Links: Talent Distribution within Teams
  Alex Novet at Hockey Graphs. March 14, 2017.

  I know very little about hockey, but this is an interesting analysis of whether hockey is a strong link (success most determined by your best player) or weak link game (success most determined by the strength of your weak link). I would not have known – as far as sports statistics, I am much more familiar with basketball – but the analysis reveals that hockey, unlike soccer (which I know even less about) – is a strong link sport.

• Tumblr to add support for ActivityPub, the social protocol powering Mastodon and other apps
  Sarah Perez for Techcrunch. November 21, 2022.

  I am not a Tumblr fan, but this is an interesting move by a centralized social media platform to federate with decentralized social media servers powered by open source software. Will it be a success? Well…

• Amazon Alexa is a ‘colossal failure,’ on pace to lose $10 billion this year
  Ron Amadeo for ArsTechnica. November 21, 2022.

  While I am not a business expert, I know enough to opine that this sounds sub-optimal.

• Brave Browser Beta v1.47 now has vertical tabs
  Danie van der Merwe at GadgeteerZA. November 25, 2022.

  While I use a heavily-configured Firefox as my primary browser, I keep Brave – which is the best option out-of-the box for people who want a solid open source browser that does not require much configuration – as a secondary browser for a few things which work better on Chromium. Adding vertical tabs is a good move, although it is not yet in the stable version of Brave.

• On the Usefulness of Photography
  Simon Serris. July 1, 2020.

  “Taking a ‘photo a day’ (as a diary, as practice) is a common concept among new photographers, but it’s really worthwhile for everyone. There’s an aesthetic component to this: Searching for a good photo in the every-day of life teaches us to notice our surroundings more.”

• TSA finds cat in checked baggage — you won’t believe what its owner said
  Emily Lefroy and Hannah Frishberg for the New York Post. November 22, 2022.

  While I do not like the “you won’t believe what its owner said” in the headline – this amusing story is well-documented with photos and is even better than advertised.

• Is it possible to use affiliate links without turning into a sleazy affiliate marketer?
  Curiosity for The Autodidacts. November 19, 2022.

  I will have to consult with my sponsors (I don’t have sponsors).

• Students at NYC high school get third grade-level lessons on ‘Goldilocks’
  George Worrell and Melissa Klein for the New York Post. November 19, 2022.

  This is not nearly as bad as my philosophy of technology class wherein the professor showed movies during each class, including Clockwork Orange and Splice, and that was the entire class – but it is close.

• Eating Japanese katsudon once served in police interrogation rooms
  SoraNews24. November 18, 2022.

  A noodle shop with an interesting backstory.

• Soviet Game and Watch: The Elektronika IM-32
  Nicole Express. November 21, 2022.

  This post inspired my article on lateral thinking and tech hardware, but it is well-worth reading in its own right since my post was not about the main point of the original piece.

3. The Old Leaf Journal

Let’s dig into our archive…

• Only President Duterte Can Curse
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 7, 2021.

  My only previous article on the Philippines.

• Saw-whet? The Rockefeller Christmas Tree Owl
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 19, 2020.

  Looking back at a certain saw-whet owl stuck in the 2020 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.

• Most Important Dylan Songs By Half Decade
  Victor V. Gurbo. December 9, 2020.

  Our resident Dylan historian, Victor V. Gurbo, gave his take on Dylan’s most important songs by era.

• The Golden Maple Leaf Journal
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. February 16, 2021.

  An autumnal photo post which was very much in line with The New Leaf Journal aesthetic.

4. Most-turned leaves of the week

I list our most-visited articles of the previous week in each newsletter. In keeping with our newsletter schedule, these “Newsletter Weeks” begin with Saturday and end on Friday. The statistics come courtesy of our local and privacy-friendly analytics solution, Koko Analytics – which I reviewed on The New Leaf Journal. The week of November 19 to 25 was the 47th Newsletter Week of 2022.

#	Title	By	Date	22Top5
1	Cross-posting from Mastodon to Twitter	NAF	4.18.22	5 (4)
2	The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei	NAF	3.14.21	47 (27)
3	An Early Review of Pixelfed - Instagram Alternative	NAF	11.13.20	8
4	Review of the Teracube 2e Smartphone	NAF	11.19.21	6
5	Review of /e/ - An Android Alternative For Mobile Phones	NAF	11.21.21	13 (5)

The short Leaflet on the Mastodon Twitter Crossposter took the top spot on our ranking for the fourth consecutive week, completing a perfect November. Spots 2-5 were closely packed in this week’s top five, with the 4th and 5th spots seeing the return of my /e/ OS review (which had made 12 consecutive top-fives prior to a few weeks on the outside) and my Teracube 2e review, both of which saw their one-year anniversaries in the past week.

5. News leaf journal

I substantially revised my May 2021 review of The Poor Little Bird. The Poor Little Bird is a short 2002 Japanese visual novel which was officially translated into English in 2005. The creator accurately described it as a “digital picture book.” The revisions, which are noted in the article, include a new title, better screenshots, updated information about acquiring and running the visual novel, and stylistic revisions throughout the post. I plan to modernize all of my older al|together visual novel reviews so that all entries have a standard format.

6. Notable leaf journal

I came across, and am currently trying, Linklonk, a social RSS reader. I use my own local RSS solution for my primary reading, but I am interested in tools that can recommend interesting content to supplement my main themes. Linklonk accepts user article submissions and then shares those submissions with other readers. If you “like” an article, you will receive more recommendations from the collection the article came from. I am still testing its features and I may review it in more detail on The New Leaf Journal in the future. For those of you who may be interested, Linklonk is free to use and sign up for.

7. Taking leaf

Thank you for joining me for another edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal (admittedly a short edition this week). If you enjoyed the content and have not done so already, you may sign up with your email or add our newsletter’s RSS feed to your favorite reader (see options).

Until the month changes to December,

Cura ut valeas.