Welcome to the (syndicated) version of the 133rd edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal. I (e)mailed the flagship edition of the newsletter on Saturday, April 29, 2023 (see original). While I have always tried to syndicate our newsletters here on Mondays, I have often failed. Here, I came up with a fool-proof way to syndicate in a timely manner. I am posting our newsletter here right after mailing it and scheduling it to go live on Sunday.

Why Sunday?

So I can include it with our April 2023 review article. I will target Saturday for next week’s newsletter syndication as usual.

Novel! Newsletter 133 is quite good if I say so myself. In addition to having 11 new articles (5 regular, 6 short) to share, I offer a good selection of 12 links from around the web and share an interesting piece of New Leaf Journal history. Below, you can find the newsletter as it was when I originally mailed it, save for the modified introduction here. If you want to learn how to receive the newsletter when it is fresh off the press, see our options for subscribing by email or adding its RSS feed to your favorite feed reader (no sign-up required for the RSS option).

Leaves from the birthday week that was

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I published five regular articles since mailing our previous newsletter.

I have written about dress and grooming code problems for real-life Japanese students with naturally brown hair. I have written about hair color in anime. In this article on Ippon Again!, I bring both of these writing interests together with an analysis of a series which has addresses in a dress and grooming code context a Japanese student with naturally brown hair and a Japanese student who is dyeing her hair brown.

Inspired by another webmaster sharing his Bing ban story, I went through our ongoing ban from the Bing Search Engine (our blacklisting has now gone over four months).

The main protagonist of a new anime series is down in the dumps after her ex-boyfriend left her for another woman he met in an online video game that he had played with the protagonist. In this article, I address her other toxic relationship – her relationship with the Windows operating system (this article is perhaps incidentally inspired by Microsoft Bing banning The New Leaf Journal).

For our third birthday, I listed our 36 most-visited articles from our first three years online and then offered two related article recommendations for each of our most popular posts.

Exactly as advertised by the headline.

I also published six shorter Leaflets and Leaf Buds throughout the week.

Leaves from around the web

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There was plenty of online writing published around the internet during The New Leaf Journal’s birthday week. However, we are not going to discuss that new writing. Instead have a long list of articles in my to-share backlog and many are from March. Let us see what I pull from the list…

Whichever country speaks it best has dibs on “fourth Rome.”

The San Francisco sea bird egg rush (maybe we can draw a straight line from this to modern San Francisco).

An interesting article well-described by its headline.

I have not been to Bushwick since photographing BLOB DYLAN in January 2021. This does not inspire me to return.

“Of course, Szmant and her fellow aquanauts never set out to prevail in a submarine battle of the sexes. They were there for the scientific opportunities—and for the adventure. And although the Tektite project may be little remembered today, its impact on research, exploration and the history of women in science has been quietly profound.”

(This does not explain our long absence from the Moon.)

I do not recall ever having been tempted by the siren song of the New York City sewer system when I was a child.

This article is about ARCHITECTURE guys. Sheesh.

Everyone who has ever handled an estate nods in understanding.

Scientists projecting their own personality issues again.

The sweets are less expensive than I would have thought.

1995 policy guidance on the use of lead-based printing inks on candy wrappers.

The Old Birthday Leaf Journal

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My New Leaf Journal birthday article features 111 article links. Let us dig into the archive for six exciting links that did not appear in our birthday party.

Photographs of an April 28, 2020 military flyover of New York City.

Re-touched photographs of the April 28, 2020 military flyover of New York City.

A philosophical exploration of anime hair (philosophical is the operative word there).

It is raining as I write this newsletter.

Sometimes I find articles I barely remember in our archives.

An essay on one of the most aesthetic scenes in anime.

Most-turned leaves of the birthday 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 17th newsletter week of 2023.

  1. Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage (NAF: 2.3.23)
    2023 appearances: 12.
    Top placements: 11.
  2. Peekier Search Engine Review (NAF: 2.26.22)
    2023 appearances: 10.
  3. The story of our Bing blacklisting (4.25.23)
    2023 appearances: NEW
  4. The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei (NAF: 3.14.21)
    2023 appearances: 17.
    Top placements: 5.
  5. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 – Statistics and Analysis (NAF: 1.18.22)
    2023 appearances: 14.

We did not receive an avalanche of birthday visitors in what turned out to be a relatively slow, Bingless week. But we were able to make our week a little bit busier by talking about how Bing is banning us. My Bing ban post appears to have been shared somewhere on Twitter to modest success, with a strong first day propelling it to third on the week. Perhaps most notable (or alarming under the circumstances) was the tsuki ga kirei article having one of its worst weeks in terms of views in its now 105-week streak in the top-five. However, in terms of maintaining its streak, it chose a good week to have a downer, coming in at fourth without any drama. The last notable event of the week is my Fire Emblem Engage strategy post notching its 11th consecutive first-place finish. That segues into a bit of New Leaf Journal history…

News leaf journal

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With 11 first-place weekly finishes, my Fire Emblem Engage strategy essay now stands alone in second place for the most top weekly ranks. My weekly ranking goes back to the first week of January 2021 (we did not have enough views in 2020 in general to make a weekly ranking project a worthwhile endeavor). Below, see the ten articles which have notched at least two first-place newsletter week finishes.

The Tiki paralogue article’s 11 first-place ranks in 12 full weeks online more than explain how it is already The New Leaf Journal’s 18th most-read article. Its strong numbers are even more impressive than they would otherwise be in light of the ongoing Bing ban. The top two articles on our list, tsuki ga kirei (the obvious outlier) and Tiki have combined to take the top spot for 16 consecutive weeks. Interestingly, only two of the other eight articles on the list, my 2021 F-Droid app review and my /e/ OS review, have made a weekly top-five in 2023. I would not be surprised to see the Persona 4 Golden artbook and Pixelfed reviews notch a top-five at some point this year, but most of our multiple first-place finishes are no longer among our most-visited articles.

Notable leaf journal

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This newsletter is already running a bit long, so I will use the Notable Leaf Journal to remind you that my special one-page GitHub New Leaf Journal feeds site is working as expected and is a great way to follow content from our broader network of projects.

Taking leaf

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Thank you as always for taking the time to read The Newsletter Leaf Journal and The New Leaf Journal. If you have not done so already, consider signing up for this newsletter via email, adding its RSS feed to your favorite feed reader, or checking for the syndicated version on The New Leaf Journal on Mondays. See all of our newsletter options here.

While the Bing ban (and by extension, the DuckDuckGo ban) continue to be vexing, we brought our third year of New Leaf Journaling to a good close. I have many in-progress projects to start our fourth year, so I hope that you look forward to the varied content to come.

Until May,

Cura ut valeas.