February 11, 2023

Newsletter Leaf Journal CXXII 〜 Memorable newsletter

Newsletter 122 includes links to our 7 newest posts, articles from around the web, and news about why The New Leaf Journal scrapped thumbnail images in its archives.

Welcome to the 122nd 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. This week’s newsletter may be a return to normalcy after I used last week’s edition to repeatedly remind readers that my colleague and I, Victor V. Gurbo, rescued a pigeon. By a “return to normalcy” I mean that there will not be nearly as many reminders of our great feat of heroism. There will, however, be recaps of our newest articles, 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 newsletter week
5. News leaf journal
6. Notable leaf journal
7. Taking leaf

1. Leaves from the week that was

I was a bit busy in the last week, so we only have three new full articles. But quality is more important than quantity (at least I hope with respect to this week).

• Familiar song in Angel Next Door anime
  N.A. Ferrell. February 6.

  We all have times when we know we have heard a song somewhere before, but cannot put a finger on where or when. This is an anecdote of one such occasion and the ensuing investigation.

• Bonner’s ‘In Dreamland’ Bedtime Story
  N.A. Ferrell. February 7.

  The third article in my Mary Graham Bonner bedtime story series (she wrote one bedtime story for every day). I published it one day late (this was her February 6 story), but close enough.

• DRM and losing the quality you paid for
  N.A. Ferrell. February 9.

  A new angle to DRM horror stories – replacing high quality content with a lower quality version thereof (Amazon edition).

Leaflets and Leafbuds

Let us see our short posts…

• Does The New Leaf Journal look different? (I don’t know what you’re talking about)
• Nintendo’s underwhelming Switch eShop fix (Better search, but most likely still terrible performance)
• Additional Best of 2022 Anime Awards (An addendum to my full year-in-review)
• Looking at ActivityPub for WordPress (We would implement it but for one minor issue)

2. Leaves from around the web

Back into my “articles to share from around the web backlog”…

• Mexico’s subway drivers depend on WhatsApp to keep the trains running
  Daniela Dib for Rest of World. January 13, 2023.

  This reads like the start of a Mussolini joke.

• New unstaffed gyoza store in Tokyo sells pot stickers 24 hours a day
  Oona McGee for SoraNews24. September 14, 2020.

  Don’t try this in New York City.

• Where to Find Ruins of the Roman Empire’s Last Years
  Tony Perrottet for Smithsonian Magazine. January 9, 2023.

  Regular New Leaf Journal readers know about Ravenna.

• California City Relocates Noisy Peacocks
  Margaret Osbourne for Smithsonian Magazine. January 10, 2023.

  I almost included this one with all of the pigeon jokes last week, but I decided that it would be too easy. Note that we have a Leaf Bud on the matter.

• OK, What Is a USCIS ‘Certificate of Non-Existence’?
  David North for Center for Immigration Studies. January 10, 2023.

  Despite being an immigration law researcher, I had never come across this form.

• Meet the world’s first (and only) cat and mouse armorer
  Kristin Romey for National Geographic. December 21, 2022.

  Meet “the greatest mouse armorer in the history of mankind.”

• YouTube creators are ducking outraged by its swearing policy
  Mitchell Clark and Jess Weatherbed for The Verge. January 13, 2023.

  This would not be a problem for The New Leaf Journal if we were trying to make money on YouTube – we are, as Victor V. Gurbo once explained, a family website.

• United Arab Emirates: New Law Regulating Work of Foreign Domestic Workers Adopted
  Ali Ebshara for Global Legal Monitor. January 5, 2023.

  “On September 15, 2022, the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) passed Federal Decree-Law No. 9 of 2022 concerning Domestic Workers. This decree-law is aimed at creating better work conditions for domestic workers in the UAE by establishing rights and protections for them. The law also establishes responsibilities that must be fulfilled by employers and recruitment agencies. Nearly 90% of the UAE’s population is foreign, with many working as domestic workers. The law took effect on December 15, 2022.”

• The hallowed history of the carrier pigeon
  Mary Blume for The International Herald Tribune. January 30, 2004.

  A very good history to which I offer two addenda. Firstly, Ms. Blume did not cover how Victor and I rescued a Brooklyn NYC pigeon 19 years after she wrote her article. Secondly, see our own posts on carrier pigeons.

• How I ruined my SEO
  John Reilly. January 15, 2023.

  Good stuff, but real professionals like me get de-indexed by Bing without explanation while remaining in good standing everywhere else.

3. The Old Leaf Journal

What’s happening in the archives?

• Teaching the Art of the Video Game SNAFU
  N.A. Ferrell. July 25, 2020.

  I adopted an alternative to the approach I advocated here in a recent video game strategy article which you will find featured in the next newsletter section.

• 1914 Moral Story For Children on Responsibility
  N.A. Ferrell. March 1, 2021.

  Combine with this week’s article on the In Dreamland bedtime story to glean a firm moral foundation for life.

• LoveChoice Review 〜 A Steam Visual Novel
  N.A. Ferrell. February 9, 2021.

  A video game possibility for your Valentine’s season enjoyment. Speaking of which…

• “The Valentine” – An Engraving by W.E. Tucker
  N.A. Ferrell. February 21, 2022.

  I published this Valentine’s article late last year. However, we link to it just in time this year.

4. 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 sixth newsletter week of 2023.

1. The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei (NAF – 3.14.21)
   6th top five of 2023. 5th top placement.
2. Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage (NAF – 2.3.23)
   Debut.
3. Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013) (NAF – 7.5.21)
   5th top five of 2023. 1 top placement.
4. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis (NAF – 1.18.22)
   6th top five of 2023.
5. Peekier Search Engine Review (NAF – 2.26.22)
   First appearance of 2023.

This week’s notable entrant into the top five is my “strategy guide” for and story about a map in Fire Emblem Engage, which not only placed second in its first full week, but also was our strongest article in the second half of the week. Maybe publishing posts about new games is wise? Then again, my article on how stats worked in the early Pokémon games notched its ninth consecutive weekly top-five going back to 2022, so who knows?

My Peekier search engine review made its first appearance of 2023. However, you will not find The New Leaf Journal on Peekier at the moment because Peekier is – you guessed it – a Bing front-end.

While this week was closer than previous weeks, my tsuki ga kirei post continues to dominate the top of the 2023 ranking – much like it has led more weeks than not since it was published in March 2021. This week makes it 94 consecutive top-five appearances (with 61 being in first place) as it closes in on a three-digit streak.

5. News leaf journal

Astute visitors to our home and archive pages will note that I have changed the site layout. I decided to move away from thumbnail images for articles, adopting a purely text-based approach. This was partially because I had been implementing thumbnails in a sub-optimal way. Because our home and archive pages are lighter without images, I opted to show 12 articles per archive instead of six, organized into two columns in desktop mode. This will require me to change how I write archive page summaries – I plan to re-write some older ones over time.

6. Notable leaf journal

I decided to turn an old Lenonvo T-400 thinkpad with Libreboot into an always-on Syncthing node. While I was at it, I also set up the Shiori bookmark manager and a WebDav store for Floccus bookmark sync and made it accessible over my local network early. The main use of the device is having an always-on Syncthing node that is not a cheap, out-of-date, Android tablet, but maybe this endeavor will lead to some article content in the near future.

7. Taking leaf

Thank you as always for reading The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you enjoyed the content and have not done so already, consider signing up for our once-weekly newsletter via email or adding our newsletter’s RSS feed to your favorite reader. We also publish a slightly modified version of the newsletter on The New Leaf Journal on Mondays. See your options here.

Until February 18,

Cura ut valeas.