The Newsletter Leaf Journal LXXXVI 〜 Don't scan weird QR codes

Welcome to the 86th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. As always, this newsletter comes to you from the waterproof keyboard of the editor of The New Leaf Journal, Nicholas A. Ferrell. Our first newsletter of June 2022 will include our usual assortment of links to our own content, links from around the web, and news and notes about The New Leaf Journal.

Table of Contents

1. Leaves & Leaflets From The Week That Was
2. Leaves From Around The Web
3. The Old Leaf Journal
4. Most-Turned Leaves Of The Newsletter Week
5. Notable Leaf Journal
6. News Leaf Journal
7. Taking Leaf

1. Leaves & Leaflets From The Week That Was

I published seven new articles since the previous newsletter. You will find the full articles, with links and brief summaries, below.

• Dangers of Eating Red Hook Fish and Eels | May 28, 2022 | Summary: So warns New York State health authorities.
• The Golden Eagles on Constantine XI's Shoes | May 29, 2022 | Summary: Another take on the death of Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI on May 29, 1453.
• "Memorial Day" by Helen Leah Reed | May 30, 2022 | Summary: A fitting early twentieth century poem to mark Memorial Day.
• Visual Novel Review: May Sky | May 31, 2022 | Summary: My review of May Sky, the longest of the al|together visual novel translations and one of the best.
• May 2022 at The New Leaf Journal | May 31, 2022 | Summary: Recapping the month in which we published 33 articles and 37 Leaflets in 31 days.
• 1999 Post on Priscilla Pigsley the Guinea Pig | June 2, 2022 | Summary: The June 2, 1999 "pet of the day"
• Dialogue: How Does Growth Even Happen? | June 3, 2022 | Summary: Justin and Justina tackle growth, philosophy, and what to do with strange QR codes.

I also published a number of Leaflet microposts in the last week. A few of the notable ones:

• Mark Twain on Saint Joan of Arc
• Hot May and Cool June
• Publishers Clearing House Search in Logs
• A DuckDuckGo Onion Referral

2. Leaves From Around The Web

We've seen what was happening at The New Leaf Journal. Let us now check in on the world wide web...

• Japan's combination laundromats/ice cream parlors are the combo we never knew we needed, until now | Casey Baseel for SoraNews24 | June 2, 2022 | Thoughts: Combination laundromats is a field with great potential.
• 11 Themes to Make Xfce Look Modern and Beautiful | It's FOSS | June 1, 2022 | Thoughts: Very hurt to see them omit the AmigaOS-inspired window theme that I use with my Xfce desktop.
• NYC schools ban use of Illuminate Education products after massive data breach | Cayla Bamberger for the New York Post | May 31, 2022 | Thoughts: New York City's decision to give a contract to a well-connected private "education" company based on its connections to the New York City government leads to the personal information of 850,000 New York City students being compromised.
• Flipnote Archive Launches, Showcasing 44 Million Flipnotes From DSI Era | Thomas Whitehead for Nintendo Life | June 1, 2022 | Thoughts: An interesting video game history preservation project.
• St. Joan of Arc: 15 quotes from her trial and interrogations | Katie Yoder for the Catholic News Agency | May 29, 2022 | Thoughts: "If I am not [in God's grace], may God place me there; if I am, may God so keep me."
• Freedom to Seek Matters | Colin Hayhurst for Mojeek | May 31, 2022 | Thoughts: A good opinion piece by the CEO of the alternative Mojeek search engine - I hope the quality of its results improves to the point where it becomes a viable primary search tool.
• Pet of the Day: Rudy the Guinea Pig | petoftheday.com | May 31, 2022 | Thoughts: I covered the June 2, 1999 pet of the day from this same site in an article; it looks like they are still going strong 23 years later.
• Have an old iPad lying around? You might be able to make it run Linux soon | Andrew Cunningham for ArsTechnica | June 2, 2022 | Thoughts: Public service announcement.

3. The Old Leaf Journal

Let's dig into our archives...

• The Quarantine Sessions: An Original Composition | Victor V. Gurbo | June 4, 2020 | Summary: Victor V. Gurbo wrote about his own song, After the Death of Boo Radley, and posted his recording of it with fellow Brooklyn musician Mark Caserta.
• "The Wave" - a Marine Painting by Norman Wilkinson | Nicholas A. Ferrell | June 1, 2021 | Summary: Dazzling - there's a pun in this summary.
• The Downed Stop Sign in Vinegar Hill | Nicholas A. Ferrell | May 20, 2022 | Summary: My first "fallen sign" article received a call-back in Justin's thoughts on strange QR codes.

4. Most-Turned Leaves Of The Newsletter Week

I list our most-visited articles of the previous week in each newsletter. In keeping with our newsletter schedule, these “Newsletter Weeks” begin with Saturday and end on Friday. The statistics come courtesy of our local and privacy-friendly analytics solution, Koko Analytics - which I reviewed on site.

The week of May 28-June 3 was the twenty-second newsletter week of 2022.

After a Hacker News-dominated previous week, the state of affairs in our weekly ranking stabilized. Despite a below average week for both, my posts on tsuki ga kirei and F-Droid apps resumed their customary top spots in our ranking. My last stand of Constantine XI piece posted another strong week on the week that included the anniversary of the fall of Constantinople, matching its best finish of 2022. After spending most of the week outside the top five, my 2021 Ubuntu Touch install piece returned to the ranking after a one-week absence. The dominant article of the previous week, my Leaflet post on a man uploading 2,000,000 videos to YouTube, made its second (and possibly last) appearance in the weekly top 5.

5. Notable Leaf Journal

This Notable Leaf Journal section is for Linux users. I use an application launcher called Ulauncher on my main desktop (running Manjaro Linux with the Xfce desktop environment) and laptop (running EndeavourOS with the Open Box window manager). Ulauncher is not only a useful application launcher, but it has a robust selection of user-built extensions. One of these extensions is a markdown table generator - which I find quite useful given that I work in markdown and writing tables in markdown can be a bit of a pain. The table in this week's most-turned leaves section was generated with this useful Ulauncher tool.

6. News Leaf Journal

The last week was not a busy week in terms of changes to The New Leaf Journal. I did notice that the recommended post section (you will find it beneath every article and Leaflet) is becoming flooded with too many Leaflet microposts in some cases. This is not always a bad thing - some of the Leaflets are genuinely substantive and worth referring to readers. However, some Leaflets are not evergreen or substantive such that I would want them to appear in lieu of our full articles. For this reason, I will go through all of our Leaflets and determine which ones should be removed from the recommended articles pool.

I launched my project to review nearly all of the al|together visual novel translations in April 2021. I only published four reviews (out of about 30) in the ensuing months. However, I picked up the pace this May, publishing two new al|together reviews, including one of the weightiest ones, in a one-week period. I am picking up the pace on the project - with several reviews planned for July and August along with a few technical edits to our previously-published reviews. I made some behind-the-scenes progress on the project over the last few days. Two of the visual novels in the al|together collection were patches - meaning that the translations were to be appended to the original Japanese games instead of the translation itself being the game file. Through a person who contacted me on Twitter last year (note I saw the message 10 months late), I gained one of the two game files and, after being asked if I knew of the other, managed to find it in a little downloaded torrent file. Thus, I now have every al|together translation available to review. I plan to write a bit about how I found the game file in a future (see leaflet).

7. Taking Leaf

Thank you for joining us for another edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you enjoyed the content, I invite you to sign up via email or add our RSS feed to your favorite feed reader. I am also syndicating our newsletter posts to Bearblog (see my blog).

Until next Saturday,

Cura ut valeas.