Welcome to the syndicated version of the 122nd edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, originally published on Buttondown on February 11, 2023.  Our newsletter recapped the week that was at The New Leaf Journal and offered 10 links from around the web, all of which you will find below.  Remember that you can sign up to receive our newsletter when it is fresh off the presses or simply add the flagship edition’s RSS feed to your favorite reader (see options).

Leaves from the week that was

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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).

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.

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.

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…

Leaves from around the web

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

This reads like the start of a Mussolini joke.

Don’t try this in New York City.

Regular New Leaf Journal readers know about Ravenna.

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.

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

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

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.

“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.”

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.

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

The Old Leaf Journal

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What’s happening in the archives?

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.

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

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

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

Most-turned leaves of the newsletter week

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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 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.

News leaf journal

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Astute visitors to our home and archive pages will note that I 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.

Notable leaf journal

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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.

Taking leaf

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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 (you’re reading it!). See your options here.