Welcome to the (syndicated version) 145th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. I originally mailed this newsletter on July 22, 2023. It was a strange newsletter because I did not publish any articles that week. Thus, we began with links from our archive and concluded with an unusual number of links from around the web.

The Old Leaf Journal

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While I did not publish new articles, we can dig into the archive for some good reading. Maybe this was just a chance to give our older content a chance to shine. Let us go with nine classic (or so I tell myself) New Leaf Journal pieces.

I fulfilled the warning of my tanka when mosquitoes mauled me on the night of July 15/16, 2023.

Our sole venture (to date) into foreign tax law.

A summer sighting from 2019.

A feature essay from Victor V. Gurbo on his original song (video link included) and the story behind its inspirations.

A simple photo piece – exactly as advertised.

The abhorrent shed that inspired this article is no more. But many sheds remain…

Despite never having made a dramatic splash in our weekly or monthly article rankings, Futaba has (for now) squeezed her way into the top-30 most-visited articles of 2023 (no doubt helped by links in two of our most-visited articles of the year thus far).

Our sole foray into the great field of “unboxing” “content.”

One of our many reflects on digital content ownership.

Leaves from around the web

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Because we have no new original articles for this newsletter, I present double our usual number of around the web links. 18 instead of 9!

Is anyone surprised?

He realized the dangers of trying to be too cute by a half.

Examining the foreign policy of Pope Francis in ten events.

“Since its establishment in 1986, the museum collection includes antique bisque dolls from Europe, karakura automata of feudal Japan, ethnological figures from various cultures, vintage Mickey Mouses, and traditional Japanese dolls.”

What if we locked the sensitivity readers in a room with magic markers and construction paper?

“‘The horror! The horror!’ The enormities the colonials inflicted on the Congolese are condensed in those dying words of Kurtz, the depraved, power-mad ivory-procurer of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It was ivory then; it is cobalt now. But exploitation and slavery continue to this day in the benighted Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), long after most former colonies have prospered in freedom.”

Although this report was published on April Fools, its contents are not an April Fools joke.

May as well get something for the trouble of having your time wasted.

The midnight express (repairs).

I focused on AI content theft in an earlier post. Here, Mr. Turley focuses on being personally slandered by Microsoft Bing’s implementation of ChatGPT.

  • Family Matters
    Eckart Frahm for Lampham’s Quarterly. April 5, 2023.

“Everyday life in the Neo-Assyrian Empire.”

“Two key factors undermined Germany’s campaign: US involvement boosted the allies’ arms-producing capabilities, while sheer Soviet manpower led to catastrophic defeat in Russia.”

I think the kids call this “ghosting.”

Russia runs into logistic issue of limited warehouse space in Central Asian neighbors.

Good CONTENT.

But much like war, you can apply a little bit of Sun Tzu to gain an advantage.

Keep it simple.

A perspective on Nambia’s peculiar wild horse community.

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 for 2023 newsletter week 29.

  1. Height Differences in Anime Romances (N.A.F, 3.22.23)
    4th appearance. 3 top placements,
  2. The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei (N.A.F., 3.14.21)
    29th appearance. 9 top placements.
  3. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 – Statistics and Analysis (N.A.F., 1.18.22)
    20th appearance.
  4. Heights in “The Dangers in My Heart” Anime (N.A.F., 4.2.23)
    7th appearance.
  5. Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage (N.A.F. 2.3.23)
    20th appearance. 11 top placements.

While we did not publish new articles, people still visited our old articles. My essay on height differences in anime romances defied my prediction from Newsletter 144 and hung on to take its third consecutive top five narrowly over my tsuki ga kirei article, which made its 117th consecutive appearance in the weekly ranking going back to April 2021. The rest of the top five consisted of some of our usual suspects, including the return of my Fire Emblem Engage guide/essay after a three-week absence.

Notable leaf journal

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I have been using a mini PC to provide the “smarts” to my internet-disconnected TV for several months now. Prior to this week, I used it exclusively with the GNOME desktop environment (because GNOME offers good scaling options for large displays, such as a 55 inch TV). It had not occurred to me to try Kodi. Kodi is free and open source media center software – think of it as an alternative to Roku and similar software and services. Despite the fact that Kodi is well known by the standards of open source alternatives, I knew very little about it since I never had much reason to use it. Thus, I was surprised to learn that one can actually start a Kodi session at log in. It took me a couple of hours to get used to Kodi’s UI, but it quickly became my preferred solution for playing local videos and Crunchyroll (with the help of an unofficial plugin). The only issues are that there is no Kodi plugin for HiDive (another anime streaming service I use) and it does not run well as an app when I am in a regular GNOME session (possibly due in part to the fact that the mini PC I use with my TV is limited).

I may have more to write about this subject in the future.

Taking leaf

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Thank you as always for reading and following The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you have not done so already, consider signing up to receive our Saturday newsletter via email or adding its RSS feed to your favorite feed reader (see options). This was a slow week at The New Leaf Journal, but I look forward to publishing new articles in the near future (which will allow us to return to a more traditional newsletter).

Until July 29,
Cura ut valeas.