Welcome to the syndicated version of the 147th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. I e-mailed the original on August 5, 2023. Below, you will find the newsletter as it originally appeared.

Leaves from the week that was

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We published five new articles since mailing Newsletter 146.

Wherein I ponder the implications of how easy it was for frauders to create convincing Basquiat forgeries.

Our Justin and Justina dialogue duo returns. Justin questioned reports of Japan’s population decline with his own unique logic.

Catch up with all of our July articles and see the most popular posts of July and of the May-July three-month period.

I read that the last Nintendo Wii game (note the Wii itself was released in 2007) was Just Dance 2020. Is this so? I investigated.

Our overheard on the street series returns!

I published five short posts to go with our full articles.

Leaves from around the web

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Let’s see what’s happening around the world wide web…

A little fountain for little bees (and wasps).

“The researchers determined that the Mamenchisaurus’ neck was approximately 49.5 feet long, per a statement.” (Rounding up I see…)

I need to consult The New Leaf Journal’s Justin for a pre-dinosaur power ranking. (See referenced dialogue.)

While I do not think that the use of oil is surprising, the article goes in depth into the issue of oil in Japanese convenience store rice balls.

Perhaps Uber can also fund teaching bike delivery guys about one-way streets and general traffic laws.

When life gives you lemons, viruses take your lemons.

“On July 19, 2023, Egypt’s Presidential Pardon Committee announced that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had issued a pardon to Patrick George Zaki, an Egyptian graduate student at Italy’s University of Bologna, one day after the Mansoura Emergency State Security Court had sentenced him to imprisonment for ‘broadcasting false news about the internal conditions of the country that would disturb security and social peace.’”

This piece needs to be written because the TV manufacturers very much do not want you to buy a dumb TV.

I went from LastPass to Bitwarden to KeePass XC. I concur with Mr. Privacy Dad that KeePass XC is the best choice overall but that Bitwarden is the best choice for most people. In any event, don’t use LastPass.

My thought when I saw the headline was that Australians must dislike burnt coffee. That turns out to be one of multiple reasons noted in the blog post.

Just off Key West.

I walked across three Manhattan-Bronx bridges (in one day… see Old Leaf Journal below)… but not this one.

The Old Leaf Journal

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Let’s dig into our archive…

My 2019 photo of a Ferris wheel just off the Triborough Bridge.

From the same walk as above…

My review of a very short free English translation of a 2008 Japanese visual novel. I enjoyed it enough to write a long analysis piece.

Just reminding myself that I am late on publishing my At Summer’s End visual novel review…

I do not use either of The Great Suspender-replacement extensions anymore (in part because I primarily use Firefox), but I will suggest some Firefox alternatives in the future.

Let no one say that this headline is misleading.

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 31.

  1. The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei (NAF, 3.14.21)
    30 appearances. 10th top placement.
  2. Height differences in anime romances (NAF, 5.22.23)
    6 appearances. 4 top placements.
  3. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 – Statistics and Analysis (NAF, 1.18.22)
    22 appearances.
  4. The Nice Boat 〜 A Look Back at the School Days Anime (NAF, 5.6.21)
    4 appearances.
  5. Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage (NAF, 2.3.23)
    23 appearances. 11 top placements.

One week after my tsuki ga kirei article saw its two-year-plus streak of weekly top fives end, it returns to the ranking with its 10th first place finish of 2023 (and 65th overall), narrowly ending the four-week reign of my essay on height differences in anime romances, which settled for second. The tsuki ga kirei post also sealed its third consecutive year with at least 30 weekly top fives after notching 36 in 2021 and 52 in 2022. Spots three-through-five all returned from last week.

Newsletter week 31 was interesting in that it was one of our better weeks of the Bing-ban era in terms of page views, but hosted one of our weaker top fives. We have seen a trend in recent weeks where more articles receive visits but the top articles are generally weaker than normal. I am curious to see how things develop as we move into August.

News leaf journal

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I posted two new collection posts during the week. See below…

I am working on creating more collection posts to make it easier for people to find series of New Leaf Journal articles. The Justin and Justina one was a priority because we have published so many dialogues. I will gradually add a link to it in all of our Justin and Justina posts. The anime questions collection is largely prospective. I have a number of prompts saved and wanted a neat way to organize all of my responses in one place. There are a couple of posts in the initial collection.

Be sure to regularly check our Collections Hub for new additions to the Collections family.

Notable leaf journal

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I came up with a few project ideas while working in various things during the last week.

  • Review how to set up a Steam Big Picture or Retro Arch session in Fedora
  • Review a free and open source Pokémon ROM randomizer

But my most exciting upcoming project…

-1-

Soon(ish)…

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, you can sign up to receive our Saturday newsletter in your email inbox or subscribe to the newsletter via RSS. I also syndicate the newsletter to The New Leaf Journal. See our options for following the newsletter here and remember that we also offer many ways to follow the main New Leaf Journal (see NLJ feeds).

I look forward to sharing articles on a variety of subjects as we continue into August.

Until August 12,
Cura ut valeas.