February 25, 2023

Newsletter Leaf Journal CXXIV 〜 Your bonnie newsletter 〜

The short 124th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal features links to new NLJ posts and 10 articles from around the web.

Welcome to the 124th 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. I am running a bit behind schedule this week, so let us jump straight into our regularly scheduled newsletter (we will skip the Notable Leaf Journal section this week)/

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. Taking leaf

Leaves from the week that was

I focused on short posts in the last week. However, that did not stop me from also publishing four regular articles.

• My Bonnie Steed - 1842 poem (NAF: Feb 19)

  An 1842 folk ballad masquerading as a magazine poem.

• The ideal phone, e-ink and QWERTY (NAF: Feb 23)

  I hope you appreciate my concept art.

• Eco-friendly highlighters, fat free soda (NAF: Feb 23)

  A short post 23 years in the making.

• Flood of Tears - Visual Novel Review (NAF: Feb 24)

  The showcase article of the week was my long review of Flood of Tears, a 2006 English translation (part of the al|together festivals) of a 2001 Japanese visual novel. I enjoyed Flood of Tears and recommend it for reasons explained in the post (namely Hina Kawase).

I also published a good number of Leaflets and Leaf Buds. I present them below in list form (a couple are bundled together because they are related.

• Spring Fashions - 1842 in Advance
• Thoughts on ‘Sick Anime Girl Disease’ & Anime illness in Please Teacher! anime
• Old wood makes for better instruments
• An incisive take on hot takes & Internet Explorer to Year of Linux Desktop
• Re; Reading social streams in feed reader
• Lutris adding Itch.io integration
• A BlackBerry-esque mini Linux computer…
• Streaming and TV in the hospital
• Babylon Bee on sushi being a prank

Consider the pieces on old wood and instrument, 1842 spring fashions, and the anime illness duo to be my featured short posts of the week. That is unless you use Lutris and have games on Itch.io, in which case that Leaflet covers some good news of note.

Leaves from around the web

Back into my backlog…

• ‘Self-Heaing’ Concrete May Have Preserved Ancient Roman Structures
  Will Sullivan for Smithsonian Magazine. January 9, 2023.

  All I know about self-healing concrete is that it is not in use for New York City sidewalks.

• Century After Extinction, Passenger Pigeons Remain Iconic—And Scientists Hope to Bring Them Back
  Carl Zimmer for National Geographic. August 31, 2014.

  Do you know what is not extinct? A single pigeon in Brooklyn that had twine tied to one of its feet. Do you know why it is not extinct? Because The New Leaf Journal rescued it.

• Help homeless people get off the streets — don’t enable their behavior
  Karl Dahlgren for New York Post. January 17, 2023.

  A fine piece in the opinion of the author of the instant newsletter.

• Oldest person in the world, French Catholic nun Sister Andre, dies at 118
  Francesca Pollio Fenton for Catholic News Agency. January 17, 2023.

  Requiescat in pace.

• DUMBO’s York Street subway station won’t be improved anytime soon
  Mary Frost for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. January 17, 2023.

  That Subway station is indeed a problem.

• Deleting Unused Online Accounts
  Jeff Starr at Perishable Press. January 25, 2023.

  Deleting unused accounts is a good idea, and Mr. Starr links to a good resource in justdelete.me. I would add consider removing identifying information in the account settings before deletion.

• Prince Harry and Therapy Culture
  Joanna Williams for City Journal. January 19, 2023.

  A critique of therapy culture, distinguished from therapy, prompted by the circus surrounding a certain memoir that has been in the news.

• New Wikipedia Design
  Yukinu. January 19, 2023.

  I never thought much about Wikipedia’s design, but I present a good guide for viewing pages in the previous Wikipedia style for those of you who are.

• It’s 2021 and I still love RSS
  Michael Beckwith. February 7, 2021.

  Published two weeks before my first feature article on RSS.

• DHS’ new parole program for Haiti comes in English and Spanish, but not Haitian creole
  Stephen Dinan for The Washington Times. January 20, 2023.

  Setting aside the increasingly broad assertions of immigration parole authority… to create a special program for three countries and apparently not know the national language of one of the three countries in the program requires a special level of competence.

The Old Leaf Journal

Let’s dig into our archive…

• Visual Novel Review - Shooting Star Hill
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 3, 2022.

  This one is thematically similar to Flood of Tears, which I reviewed last week. You can also see my follow-up analysis piece, but note that it has spoilers.

• Justin and Justina 〜 Convincing a Google Devotee to Try Something New
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. August 11, 2021.

  We will be building off this in a way that better incorporates Bing in the near-future.

• The Briefest Mid-March Snow in Brooklyn
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 17, 2021.

  Would fit February this year.

• Old Games, MIDI, and EndeavourOS
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. September 7, 2022.

  Update coming soon.

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 eighth newsletter week of 2023.

1. Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage (NAF: 2.3.23)
   Third top five of 2023. Second top placement.

2. The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei (NAF: 3.14.21)
   Eighth top five of 2023. Five top placements.

3. How to Find Substack RSS Feeds and Other Notes (NAF: 6.19.21)
   First top five of 2023.

4. Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021) (NAF: 11.28.21)
   First top five of 2023.

5. Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013) (NAF: 7.5.21)
   Sixth top five of 2023. One top placement.

With the exception of my Fire Emblem Engage piece, which comfortably claimed its second consecutive top five, the rest of our list – which was a bit soft after tsuki ga kirei – resembled an early 2022 ranking. Two of our more popular articles of 2022, my posts on Substack RSS feeds and F-Droid apps, made their 2023 top-five debuts. As for my tsuki ga kirei post, it now has 96 consecutive appearances as it closes in on 100. My analysis of early-generation Pokémon stats found itself on the outside looking in (9th place) for the first time in 2023 after beginning the year with seven consecutive weekly top fives (ten going back to 2022).

News leaf journal

This week saw no notable changes behind the scenes at The New Leaf Journal (refreshing). I did take another stab at learning from Bing why we are being blacklisted, but there is no obvious progress on that front more than one month in. In brighter news, I acquired a new topic to write about in the form of a mini Beelink PC that is now serving as my media center. You can look forward to that sometime in March.

Taking leaf

Thank you as always for joining me for another edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal – albeit a short and somewhat late edition. If you enjoyed the content and have not done so already, you can add your email to our subscriber list or simply add our newsletter’s RSS feed to your favorite feed reader (no email required). I also syndicate the newsletter to The New Leaf Journal on Mondays, although last week’s edition only made it to the main site on Thursday (I forgot to publish…). You can see our sign-up options here.

I look forward to returning next week with our first March 2023 newsletter – it should be longer and mailed earlier in the day on March 4.

Until then,

Cura ut valeas.