Welcome to the syndicated version of Newsletter Leaf Journal 138 (see original). I am supposed to syndicate our Saturday newsletters on Monday, but I was a bit late this week (it happens). Fortunately, our newsletters are evergreen. If you want to make sure you receive the flagship edition when it is hot off the presses, you can sign up via email or add its RSS feed to your favorite feed reader (what is a feed reader?). See all of our newsletter following options here.

Leaves from the week that was

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I published four new articles since mailing the previous newsletter.

A simple Memorial Day poem from a 1917 collection.

My 20th al|together visual novel review covered a two-part visual novel. The first, which featured a man with an empty bird cage for a head, was surprisingly enjoyable.

Recapping our fourth May.

My journey from one phone to another.

It was a slow week for short posts, but I published three to add to our collection.

Leaves from around the web

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Let’s see what is going on around the world wide web…

A worthy photography subject.

I do not eat out. But for those of you who do eat out, have you ever thought to yourself that what the restaurant experience needs is more phone useage?

Many good photographs and illustrations included.

Learn about Roman golden glass in this PDF of a magazine from 1996. Then read about a 2023 golden glass discovery in Smithsonian Magazine.

Ecologists in Brazil and Arizona did their utmost to get to the bottom of it, notwithstanding recent travel restrictions.

A strong piece (with which I agree) from Josh Blackman about the conditions that harm free speech and inquiry on law school campuses.

The story of a hobby turning into a museum (you can visit at Columbus, Georgia).

I approve of the aesthetics.

A very distinctly American story.

18th century visions of Saint Joseph.

Good.

While I am not sure about the question, the article is interesting.

The Old Leaf Journal

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Let’s dig into our archive…

A short visual novel by the same team behind I, Too, Saw Dreams Through Air. My overall opinion of Adagio was, however, less positive than my view of the first half of Dreams Through Air.

I wrote an article this week about switching from one to another, but others would say “it’s all Android.”

What was an article in 2020 would today be a Leaflet.

A beautifully written account.

Link to cover included.

The cheap tablet featured in this article earned a cameo mention in my most recent article.

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 22nd newsletter week of 2023.

  1. The Last Stand of Constantine XI (NAF: May 30, 2020)
    2023 Appearances: 3
    Top Placements: 1
  2. Peekier Search Engine Review (NAF: 2.26.22)
    2023 Appearances: 15
    Top Placements: 3
  3. Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage (NAF: 2.3.23)
    2023 Appearances: 17
    Top Placements: 11
  4. How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name (NAF: 3.11.21)
    2023 Appearances: 3
  5. The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei (NAF: 3.14.21)
    2023 Appearances: 22
    Top Placements: 5

My May 30, 2020 article on the last stand of Constantine XI was our second most-read article of 2020, 8th most-read of 2021, and 7th most-read of 2022. Since we began keeping track of weekly ranks in 2021, it had made 35 weekly top-five appearances. With its 36th appearance, it joins the rank of articles that have topped our weekly ranking. A big day on the anniversary of Constantine XI’s last stand (May 29) followed by several solid showings was enough to hold off Peekier for the top spot.

Constantine XI has been weaker in 2023 than it was last year, and its first number one week was not its best week (albeit it was one of its better weeks). But most of our articles, save for Peekier and forget-me-not flowers, have been weaker in 2023 due to our Bing de-indexing, and weekly rankings are relative.

My tsuki ga kirei article had its worst week in more than two years. However, it often ebbs and flows with The New Leaf Journal as a whole, and it made its 110th consecutive top five after a scare in the middle of the week, albeit its record streak is beginning to look a bit shaky.

News leaf journal

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There were no big site changes in the last week. However, I am working on cleaning up my older al|together reviews and standardizing their formats. In a few cases, I may change the article URL, but we will have redirects set up to ensure that there are no broken links before I update them all.

Notable leaf journal

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I have a Google Webmaster Account. Google tracks how many people click New Leaf Journal articles from Google Search. Thus, while we do not use Google Analytics or any Google scripts on site, I still have an idea of what is going on with our site in Google beyond the referrals picked up by Koko Analytics. I noted that there were a few articles for which Google reported more clicks than Koko Analytics counted page views for May. One notable case was my Ghostwriter markdown editor review, which would have come close to notching a top-12 in May based on its Google stats, but came it at 17th by Koko Analytics’ count. What explains the difference? Koko does not record hits for users who enable do not track (I do not on my browsers) or users who disable JavaScript (I do this by default), so it is possible that a good number of our users satisfy one or both conditions. That Ghostwriter, a local-first Linux markdown editor, saw the most notable discrepancy would be in line with my theory.

Taking leaf

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Thank you as always for joining us for the latest edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you enjoyed the newsletter and are not already a subscriber, we invite you to sign up for our weekly email, add our newsletter’s RSS feed to your favorite feed reader, or follow the syndicated version of the newsletter at The New Leaf Journal. See our options here.

We had a somewhat slow, albeit solid week at The New Leaf Journal, and I look forward to picking up the pace as we move into June. (I will have you know, however, that those al|together visual novel reviews are a bit work-intensive.)

Until June 10,

Cura ut valeas.