December 3, 2022

Newsletter Leaf Journal CXII 〜 Visionary newsletter

The 112th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal features links to the six newest New Leaf Journal articles and 10 articles from around the web.

Welcome to the 112th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially 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 welcome December with our usual assortment of New Leaf Journal article links, links from around the web, and other news and notes.

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

Leaves from the week that was

I published six new articles since mailing our previous newsletter (I was surprised when I checked how many articles we had published).

• Wanderers in the Sky - Visual Novel Review
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 27, 2022.

  This is one of my al|together visual novel reviews. While I was not too impressed with Wanderers, I had a bit to say about it.

• Be sure how you begin (George Birdseye)
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 28, 2022.

  A charming nineteenth century children’s poem with a good moral.

• Visions from the Other Side Review
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 29, 2022.

  The al|together visual novel reviews came in a pair this week. While Visions is a bit better than Wanderers, it still falls in the lower half of the al|together visual novels that I have reviewed thus far.

• On buying Christmas trees in November
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 30, 2022.

  I could hardly let November pass without a Justin and Justina dialogue.

• November 2022 at The New Leaf Journal
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 30, 2022.

  Our regularly scheduled month in review posts includes a topic-sorted list of our November content and the top-12 most-visited articles of the month.

• Pigeons on Pierrepont Street
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. December 2, 2022.

  We lead off the last month of 2022 with four pigeons.

2. Leaves from around the web

Let’s see what is happening around the web…

• Let’s Not Set Aside The Scholarly Debate About Vacatur
  Josh Blackman for the Volokh Conspiracy. December 3, 2022.

  An interesting piece on a legal argument from the recent Supreme Court oral arguments in United States v. Texas.

• Steam On Linux Usage Climbs Higher Thanks To The Steam Deck
  Michael Larabel for Phoronix. December 1, 2022.

  As a Linux user who does not have a Steam Deck and does not plan to buy one, this is good to see for gaming on Linux generally.

• Can Hall Effect Sensors Stop Drift Forever?
  Tobias Isakeit for iFixit News. December 1, 2022.

  I will need to cover this since I wrote about the last major game console controller to use Hall Effect sensors for its joystick, the Sega Dreamcast.

• Neighborhood Metamorphosis: In Jackson Heights, a street becomes a park
  Theodore Kupfer for City Journal. November 2022.

  Despite living in New York City my entire life, I have only been to Jackson Heights, Queens, on one occasion in May 2016. Thus, while I have no personal stake in the interesting “open streets” debate discussed in this article, I will say that the author is too dismissive of the complaints raised by people who actually live on said open street.

• Pokémon Scarlet and Violet seem to use the same RNG seed under certain battle conditions
  Ayuo Kawase for Automation West. November 29, 2022.

  As The New Leaf Journal’s foremost Pokémon battling expert (I claim the title for having won my published battles against New Leaf Journal colleague Victor V. Gurbo), I can confirm for the uninitiated that this state of affairs is highly sub-optimal.

• An Outside Speaker? A Constitutionally Dubious, Bad Idea
  John C. Wohlstetter for The American Spectator. November 28, 2022.

  Can the U.S. House of Representatives choose as its Speaker someone who is not a member of the House? I know the basis for some arguing that it can, but I have not personally studied the issue – which will likely remain academic for practical intents and purposes – too closely. Mr. Wohlstetter here argues that it cannot. (Caveat: Since the article discusses the presidential line of succession, I will note that I do have questions about whether the Speaker and Senate President Pro Tempore belong on the list.)

• Netherlands to close up to 3,000 farms to comply with EU rules
  James Crisp for the Telegraph. November 28, 2022.

  There is fortunately no historical precedent for government farm seizures ending poorly. Carry on.

• The ‘Random Catholic Dude’ behind the website chronicling the Catholic hierarchy
  Hannah Brockhaus for Catholic News Agency. November 27, 2022.

  Some people start little online magazines as side projects. But kings chronicle “both current and historical data for the [Catholic] Church’s hierarchy…”

• NYC landlords must post FDNY safety bulletin warning of e-bike battery fires
  Carl Campanile and Bernadette Hogan for the New York Post. November 27, 2022.

  Sadly, this is all the FDNY can do because most of us will never love anyone or anything as much as the authorities in New York City love e-bikes.

• Here’s why Yankees’ Aaron Judge didn’t really get ‘Barry Bonds treatment’ in 2022
  Thomas Carnnante for Yankees Go Yard. September 30, 2022.

  While I have never been a baseball guy, I have always been curious about why Barry Bonds was intentionally walked so often in 2006 and 2007. For reference, Mr. Bonds, likely with the assistance of certain substances, won four consecutive MVPs from 2001-2004 while posting four of the greatest offensive seasons in baseball history. It is easy to see why no one wanted to pitch to him then or before (he was statistically the best player of the 90s as well), but what of 2006 and 2007, when he was diminished somewhat by age and injuries. While this article does not precisely answer the 2006/2007 question, it does offer perspective on why there were unique rules for how to pitch to Mr. Bonds.

The Old Leaf Journal

Let’s dig into our archive…

• Reviewing the HALOmask and är Mask
  Victor V. Gurbo. December 2, 2020.

  My colleague Victor V. Gurbo wrote a review of two protective masks back in 2020. The review was our third most-read article of 2021. While it has fallen off significantly in 2022, its strong January was enough to earn it a respectable finish in our year-end ranking this year, albeit it will likely lose a couple of spots before January 1.

• Justin & Justina 〜 A 5% Chance of Rain
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. December 3, 2020.

  It is raining while I write this newsletter on the two-year anniversary of my dialogue on how to handle a 5% chance of rain.

• All About the Saw-whet Owl
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. December 4, 2021.

  One of our strongest forays into nature writing.

• Matter of Man, 12 I&N Dec. 305 (BIA 1967) - BIA Hong Kong Precedent
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. June 8, 2021.

  Enjoy my analysis of a very obscure precedent decision in U.S. immigration law.

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 26 to December 2 was the 48th Newsletter Week of 2022.

#	Title	Author	Pub	22Top5
1	Cross-posing from Mastodon to Twitter	NAF	4.18.22	6 (5)
2	The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei	NAF	3.14.21	48 (27)
3	Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021)	NAF	11.27.21	42 (7)
4	Installing Ubuntu Touch on an Asus Nexus 7 (2013)	NAF	7.5.21	34
5	Review of /e/ - An Android Alternative For Mobile Phones	NAF	11.21.21	14 (5)

Beginning with the last week of September, our weekly top fives had regularly featured articles making their first-ever appearances. Newsletter Week 48 represented the return of the stand-bys. While my short Mastodon Twitter Crossposter leaflet took the top spot for the fifth consecutive week, spots 2-5 featured the four articles with the most weekly top fives in 2022 in order. With that being said, the top five was relatively soft compared to the previous few weeks. I suspect that this may be the final week of the Mastodon Twitter Crossposter Leaflet’s reign atop the ranking, but we will find out for sure on November 9.

5. News leaf journal

I updated a few more of my old al|together visual novel reviews to standardize the format and make other small improvements in the process. I plan to finish editing all of the older reviews this week.

Moreover, I am looking at re-writing our categories for 2023. I do not think that our current category structure is particularly useful based on our content, so I will see if there is a way to make it more helpful for new visitors looking for articles that interest them.

6. Notable leaf journal

I noticed that there are questions about whether the Mastodon Twitter Crossposter, which inspired our two most-read articles of November 2022, is still working. I am not quite sure about all of the particulars, but since I have it set up, I will monitor to see if there are any issues. In any event, I have been looking at some different solutions for syndicating our content.

7. Taking leaf

Thank you as always for reading and following The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you enjoyed the content and have not done so already, you can subscribe to this weekly newsletter via email or add the RSS feed for this newsletter to your favorite feed reader: see options.

Until December 9,

Cura ut valeas.