March 4, 2023

Newsletter Leaf Journal CXXV 〜 Winter in terms of leaves 〜

The 125th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal is lacking in new New Leaf Journal links, but includes links to 12 articles around the web.

Welcome to the 125th 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. Today’s newsletter will be unique in that there is very little New Leaf Journal news. The only full “article” I published last week was our February review – but I did publish a few short posts. I also drafted a few articles, but with work I did not have time to sit down and publish them. This means two things. A busy week to come and more extra newsletter content this week since I do not have much to share in the form of links to new things published at The New Leaf Journal. (Note: I am skipping the “News leaf journal” section this week because I did not make any changes to the site.)

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. Notable leaf journal
6. Taking leaf

Leaves from the week that was

Our only regular article of the week was the February 2023 month-in-review. That post offers a great way to catch up on our articles from the previous month. It also includes our most-visited articles the month, led for the first time by a video game article. While there was little new on the article front, I did publish a few short posts.

• Report: Blob Dylan Seen in Williamsburg
  N.A. Ferrell. February 27.

  Mr. Apurva Chitnis described encountering the real Blob Dylan in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In telling his story, he linked to our in-depth BLOB DYLAN reporting.

• The dark tone of Persona 3
  N.A. Ferrell. February 27.

  Some thoughts on how the first of the three modern Persona games differed in mood and tone from its two successors.

• On the FBI’s ad-blocker recommendation
  N.A. Ferrell. March 2.

  I agree in principle but advise (and offer) more specific recommendations.

• St. Francis sells Brooklyn Heights campus
  N.A. Ferrell. March 3.

  A bit of Brooklyn commentary.

• Headline watch: Cybersecurity for 5+-year-olds
  N.A. Ferrell. March 3.

  The Malwarebytes blog offered five tips for teaching your 5 year old about cybersecurity and online privacy. The issues here are myriad. I opted against writing a full article because I felt like that would inadvertently encourage this kind of article. However, a couple of the (highly questionable) tips were too close to my wheelhouse to let pass without comment.

Leaves from around the web

Because The New Leaf Journal was a bit light on new posts this week, I present twelve articles from around the web instead of our usual ten.

• Busted and Broken Fossils Show How Dinosaurs Fought
  Riley Black for Smithsonian Magazine. January 17, 2023.

  I thought of a joke but I will save it for a New Leaf Journal dialogue this week..

• Breaking Away from Big Social Media
  Jeff Starr at Perishable Press. January 20, 2023.

  A thoughtful piece on big tech proprietary social media.

• The Fake Artists Problem Is Much Worse
  Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker. April 9, 2022.

  An in-depth piece on an interesting problem with music streaming services (I learned a bit since I do not use any music streaming services).

• NYC cabbie is still cruising the streets at 89
  Matthew Sedacca at the New York Post. January 21, 2023.

  Living his best life.

• Going Down: Entrapments Plague MTA’s Expensive New Elevators
  Greg Smith for The City. January 19, 2023.

  You may ask “how did they repair faulty elevators and make them dramatically worse in so doing?” I answer “it’s New York’s MTA.”

• Why do people spend so long in jail without going to trial in Japan?
  Master Blaster for SoraNews24. January 24, 2023.

  The answer is fairly creative.

• Federal agent used DHS car to deliver packages for Amazon
  Stephen Dinan for The Washington Times. January 24, 2023.

  Was that wrong? Should he have not done that?

• Authentic 3,000-Year-Old Bronze Age sword put on display at Field Museum
  Field Museum. January 17, 2023.

  “Nearly 100 years ago, the Field Museum acquired a bronze sword from Europe, but it was thought to be a well-made replica. But a new analysis of the sword revealed that the sword is the real deal, dating back 3,000 years to the Bronze Age.”

• IPinside: Korea’s mandatory spyware
  Almost Secure. January 25, 2023.

  “Today I want to shed some light on another application that many people in South Korea had to install on their computers: IPinside LWS Agent by Interezen.” (What could go wrong?)

• Apple Cuts SSD Performance for Entry-level 2023 MacBook Pro, M2 Mac Mini
  Brandon Hill for Tom’s Hardware. January 24, 2023.

  I happily avoid all of these problems by not buying Macs.

• I Almost Bought a Scanner
  Lee A. Johnson. January 25, 2023.

  The headline undersells an interesting post by a professional photographer about challenges involving high-end (but old) scanners.

• Would You Prefer to Get Each of Our Posts as an E-Mail?
  Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy. January 25, 2023.

  I received this article in my feed reader because I subscribe to Mr. Volokh’s RSS feed (as well as Mr. Josh Blackman’s also from the Volokh Conspiracy). Suffice it to say I prefer the feed option to the email option. But Volokh Conspiracy has good writing, so consider this another subscription option. Note his discussion of Feedburner feeds in the post is not necessary (add /feed to the end of the Volokh Conspiracy on Reason or to an individual author archive).

The Old Leaf Journal

Let’s dig into our archive…

• On Children Watching Videos Outdoors
  N.A. Ferrell. August 1, 2022.

  Tangentially related to the Malwarebytes tips for teaching your 5-year-old about cybersecurity and online privacy.

• 1914 Moral Story For Children on Responsibility
  N.A. Ferrell. March 1, 2023.

  The story includes nothing about cybersecurity tips, however.

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

  It’s not raining as I draft this, but the chance is 59% at the moment.

• Building a Big Joe-Williams-Inspired Nine String Guitar
  Victor V. Gurbo. March 12, 2022.

  Victor V. Gurbo shows off his hand-built Big Joe Williams 12-string guitar and shares some music history notes.

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 ninth newsletter week of 2023.

1. Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage (NAF: 2.3.23)
   2023 appearances: 4. Top placements: 3.
2. Peekier Search Engine Review (NAF: 2.26.22)
   2023 appearances: 2.
3. The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei (NAF: 3.14.21)
   2023 appearances: 9. Top placements: 5.
4. Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013) (NAF: 7.5.21)
   2023 appearances: 7. Top placements: 1.
5. Nintendo Power’s 1999 Yoshi in Pokémon April Fools Prank (NAF: 4.1.21)
   2023 appearances: NEW.

Our banishment from Bing and all Bing front-ends continues to exert an effect on our article rankings. But one article that has proven immune is my review of Peekier, which is an interesting Bing front-end. While you are unlikely to find The New Leaf Journal on Peekier at the moment, you will find Peekier on The New Leaf Journal. Dropping to third was my history of the phrase tsuki ga kirei, which had one of its weakest weeks in numerical terms, but nevertheless made its 97th consecutive top five. Our new article of the week is my 2021 post on a 1999 Pokémon April Fools prank, which only previously appeared in one top five last November. It may be peaking at just the right time as we approach April Fools next month.

One near-surprise was the performance of my February 23 article on my desire for an e-ink phone with a QWERTY keyboard, which came in at sixth place and would have had enough views for fourth place in Newsletter Week 8 (alas, it was published during Newsletter Week 8). I am not sure what to make of its solid performance in its first full week online, but perhaps we will see it in some of these rankings in the future.

Notable leaf journal

I mentioned in Newsletter 124 that I had procured a mini PC and set it up with the GNOME edition of Fedora to watch things on my TV. The set-up continues to work well, and I also took some notes for how to change the resolution of ONScripter-EN visual novels (to appear on a New Leaf Journal near you in the near future).

Speaking of ONScripter-EN visual novels, I have drafted a long, comprehensive article, on making Linux play games that use MIDI for their soundtracks (my first attempt fix was not permanent). This will be published during the upcoming week.

After a bit of a hiatus, I returned to Fire Emblem Engage in the evenings after working during the day. My highly-viewed (by our standards) article from last month covered what was, at the time, the only available DLC paralogue. While I was away, three new DLC paralogues were added. I wondered whether I could turn them into articles. Alas, the first two proved to be less challenging than taking the Tiki paralogue on one chapter sooner than I should have (Soren and Camilla respectively). The third, Hector, may be a bit more of a problem, but I will see once it is completed. There are apparently two more paralogues coming on March 8. Since I am still only in the mid-game, I suppose I will wait a little so I can get the most of the rewards that come from them in my first play-through.

While researching and writing about U.S. immigration law last week, I came across a few issues that may make for interesting articles for curious readers. I put those on my to-do list for March.

Taking leaf

Thank you as always for reading The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you have not done so already, you can sign up to receive our Saturday newsletter via email or simply add the newsletter’s RSS feed to your favorite reader. I also syndicate the newsletter to The New Leaf Journal on Mondays. See all of our options here.

I managed to fill this issue of The Newsletter Leaf Journal despite not having much to share from The New Leaf Journal. I look forward to crafting a newsletter next week with more links from Mr. Envelope’s parent publication.

Until next week,

Cura ut valeas.