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From Brad Linder at Liliputing:

The Amazon Appstore allows you to download and install apps on Amazon Fire tablets and Fire TV devices. But the Appstore actually predates the Amazon Fire ecosystem. Amazon first launched the Appstore in March, 2011 as an app that could be installed on Android phones and tablets. The first Amazon Fire-branded tablet didn’t launch until half a year later. Fourteen years later Amazon has announced that it’s discontinuing the Appstore for Android.

I learned two things here. Firstly, while I know that Amazon’s Fire OS is based on Android and I have run F-Droid (a free and open source Android app store) on Fire devices, it had never occurred to me that Amazon promoted its Appstore on regular Android devices. Note that I run GrapheneOS on my phone with no Google Play Services, so I am not up to date on the proprietary app stores. Secondly, I was even more surprised to learn that the Amazon Appstore pre-dates the first Fire OS device, meaning it was originally released for main-line Android devices. Go figure. I have some limited experience with the Amazon Appstore from my old 2013 Kindle Fire HDX (see my one and only Amazon Appstore visual novel review) and BlackBerry Classic, both of which ran Android-derived operating systems and shipped Amazon Appstore as their default app stores.

[Source: Brad Linder for Liliputing (February 20, 2025)]

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On January 22, 2025, I read Pixy Misa’s Daily Tech News on Ace of Spades HQ. It included a fun fact along with a link about IMDB’s CEO stepping down after 35 years:

If you do the math, then yes, that means IMDB is older than the web. It started on Usenet on the rec.arts.movies newsgroup during the late Cretaceous.

Who knew? Not me. I have only found myself on IMDB on rare occasions when I was looking up something or other, so I never thought much about the site’s origins. It is neat that what remains a well-known and highly trafficked site has such humble origins.

[Source: Pixy Misa at Ace of Spades HQ]

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Brooklyn Borough Hall in Downtown Brooklyn was originally Brooklyn City Hall. Construction began in 1834 and “Brooklyn’s new City Hall opened its doors in the spring of 1849, although the building really wasn’t completed until the end of the 1860s.” After Brooklyn was incorporated into New York City in 1898, City Hall became Borough Hall. According to a history article, there was a movement to demolish Borough Hall in the 1920s. The land for the former City Hall had been given to Brooklyn by Hezekiah Pierrepont (Brooklyn Heights still has a Pierrepont Street). Pierrepont added a provision to ensure that the land would be used for its intended purpose, I quote from Brownstoner:

The deeds and old records were dusted off, and it was revealed that Hezekiah Pierrepont was a crafty planner. The deed to the triangular property, which included both the building and the small park in front of it, had conditions attached to the gifted land. Pierrepont stipulated that no matter what the city wanted to do, no building other than a city hall could be erected on the site. If they violated that, the land could revert to the Pierrepont estate. Borough Hall was there to stay.

I tip my hat to Pierrepont for the good planning. While recent Borough Presidents have had an unfortunate tendency of making Borough Hall tacky with their de facto campaign banners, it is a nice building and monument to Brooklyn’s history. Now if only we could raise the Soviet-style Kings County Supreme Court building which casts a shadow over the whole plaza.

[Source: Suzanne Spellen for Brownstoner]

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I read an interesting January 15, 2025 article by Bob Holmes at Knowable Magazine titled The Caterpillars that can kill you. One may thing that I will offer a caterpillar fact as something I learned from the article. Not so. I present a lizard fact:

[A] forerunner to the new blockbuster drug semaglutide — better known by brand names such as Ozempic and Wegovy — was based on a molecule extracted from a venomous lizard, the Gila monster.

I present a Gila monster for those of you (which included be before finding this link) who are not familiar with it.

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According to a January 19, 2025 report by Molly Liebergall in Morning Brew, Mars, which I knew for being a candy maufacturer, “controls nearly half of the ~6,600 corporate-owned pet clinics in the [United States]…” The report notes that Mars decided to enter the vet business about 30 years ago and “[r]evenue has spiked 284% since then…” How is this working for pet owners? “The average vet bill is ~60% more expensive than it was in 2014…” [Source: Molly Liebergall for Morning Brew] You would think Mars could use some of the windfall to make some exciting new M&Ms or something.

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From Anime News Network:

The official X/Twitter account for the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Mei smartphone game in the Higurashi: When They Cry franchise announced on Friday that the game is ending service on February 27.

I read all eight chapters of the main-line Higurashi: When They Cry series (I read the last two after starting The New Leaf Journal). I was not aware that there was a Japan-only smartphone game. According to Anime News Network, the soon-to-be-defunct Higurashi phone game was first made available in 2020 and features an original story. Customers will have a three-month window to request refunds after the game is taken offline. There is probably a good game preservation angle to this story, but I am content for things I learned purposes for noting that I learned the game exists (soon-to-be existed).

[Source: Anime News Network]

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I missed posting a things I learned article yesterday because I was dizzy. Today is Inauguration Day, so I’ll try to learn something new about Presidential inaugurations for later today. I am watching the inaugration festivities while working at the moment, however, so that will have to wait. [Live Coverage Link]

(PS: It’s not too late to reverse course and not un-ban TikTok, which should be banned. You were right the first time, Mr. President-elect!)

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A small web search engine called Raw Web[1] showed up in my New Leaf Journal Koko Analytics logs. I am testing it a bit. While testing, I came across Tomas Sedovic’s review of A Summer’s End, a visual novel review from 2020. This caught my attention because I reviewed At Summer’s End, the 2006 localization of a doujin Japanese visual novel Natsu no Owari ni. A Summer’s End is a very different piece, an original English language visual novel released in 2020 and set in Hong Kong in 1986. Mr. Sedovic had some niggles with A Summer’s End, but ultimately came away impressed. I am content with my current coverage of Summer’s End visual novels, so I will not add A Summer’s End to my growing list of reviews, but readers can consult Mr. Sedovic’s review and A Summer’s End’s Visual Novel Database page to see if it looks like something they are interested in reading. For others, the very thematically different At Summer’s End, which I reviewed, is 100% free to download and play.

[1]: https://rawweb.org/ (Raw Web search engine)

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From CNET:

Sometimes, it’s the little things in life. Little things such as not having to pick up dirty socks strewn about the house after a long day. With the unveiling of Roborock’s Saros Z70, robovac with first-ever mechanical task arm at CES this week, the future of tidying up looks brighter — and easier — than ever.

[Source: CNET – A Robot Vacuum That Picks Up Socks Stole Our Hearts (and Socks) at CES 2025 (January 9, 2025)]

I have a robot vacuum. It does not have an arm. It also does not connect to the internet. It just vacuums. I will concede that the arm is cool, albeit not especially useful as it was presented at CES 2025. I would be open to a robot vacuum with an arm provided that it is not calling home to some mysterious proprietary cloud somewhere.

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A website called The Ongaku published an article about the upcoming April 2025 re-release of the Super Mario World soundtrack on vinyl. Did someone say re-release?

Warner Music Japan pressed the Super Mario World compilation on two compact discs in February of 1991, alongside a dual audio cassette edition. Preorders have opened at Tower Records in Japan for the vinyl edition, scheduled for release on April 30th in Japan.

The Ongaku described the original 1991 recordings:

The first disc is dedicated to jazz renditions of series themes composed by Koji Kondo. Dragon Quest composer Koichi Sugiyama served as general producer and Sadao Watanabe as sound producer on the original material. Arrangements are performed by Soichi Norikii on keyboard, Tsunehide Matsuki on guitar, Jun Kajiwara on electric guitar, Kenji Takamizu on electric bass, Yuichi Tokashiki on drums, Motoya Hamaguchi on percussion and Keiji Toriyama on synthesizers.

Little did I know that there was a two-part CD release of the Super Mario World soundtrack back in 1991. I am not an audiophile, but I am sure some people out there will praise the decision to re-release the music on vinyl instead of CDs.

[Source: Super Mario world vinyl sound track planned for late April at The Ongaku (January 15, 2025)]

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I have spent the last day or so fidding with a new RSS reader set-up after deciding to move off using a phone-exclusive option (the very nice Handy Reading). I decided to return to Miniflux, hosted with Pikapods. I imported my feeds and had more than 3,000 “unread” articles on first import. I tried to mark several feeds “as read” to start getting organized. However, it was not working. Was there something wrong with my set-up? Or, as I learned indirectly from someone who raised a GitHub issue wanting an option to Disable mark as read confirmation, perhaps the issue was that I needed to allow scripts on my Miniflux instance in uBlock Origin (which is set to not allow 1st or 3rd party scripts by default).

(PS: I would not want to disable the mark all as read confirmation.)

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From Matty Merritt at Morning Brew:

Gambling on commercial flights has been illegal in the US since 1962, but there have been attempts to change the law over the last few decades. In 1991, US-registered cruise ships secured gambling rights, and a few smaller airlines such as Northwest Airlines and TWA attempted unsuccessfully to use the momentum to bring betting aboard their flights.

Mr. Meritt noted one unusccessful implementation of on-flight gambling:

Singapore Airlines attempted to put physical slot machines on a flight in 1981. It was popular, but the machines kept breaking.

[Source: Matty Merritt at Morning Brew (archived)]

I cannot think of anything commercial airliners need more than on-flight gambling. It should go well with on-flight booze to make flying a more pleasant experience for everyone. This news ties in nicely to my list of things I learned in 2024, in which I discussed learning about Washington D.C.’s official sports gambling partnership with FanDuel. Speaking of sports gambling, that was the subject of my 01-02-25 Thing I Learned.

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On December 23, 2024, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) made an exciting announcement:

The Coast Guard has officially welcomed its first polar icebreaker in more than 25 years – the recently acquired Aiviq, a commercial vessel that will be renamed CGC Storis.

I extend a hardy welcome to Storis. The USCG press release included some good facts about the newest member of its fleet:

  • Storis is named aftrer “the original CGS Storis, a legendary light icebreaker and medium endurance cutter commissioned in 1942 that patrolled for submarines and ran convoys during World War II and led the first American transit of the Northwest Passage.” (Also see: Dedicated USCG article on the CGS Storis)
  • The new CGC Storis has undergone limited changes since its acquisition last month. These included painting the hull red and labeling the ship as WAGB-21. (Note: “Last month” would be November 2024.)
  • The vessel will be permanently homeported in Juneau, Alaska once the shoreside infrastructure is ready. The design and construction work for the homeporting project will take several years
  • As of December 23, 2024, the USCG “only has two operational icebreakers.” One of those two icebreakers, the CGC Healy, “was temporarily sidelines after experiencing an electrical fire in July.” The other icebreaker, CGS Polar Star, “is nearly 50 years old.”
  • The USCG purchased M/V Aiviq from Offshore Surface Vessels LLC for $125 million.
  • The new CGC Storis, formerly the M/V Aviq, was built in 2012. It is 360-feet long and a class 3-equivalent icebreaker.
  • Before it becaome a USCG vessel, the M/V Aviq “supported oil exploration in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska in the Arctic Ocean, and has deployed twice to the Antarctic.”
  • The new CGS Storis will help bridge a gap while the USCG works on acquiring new Polar Security Cutters.
  • “The initial commissioning crew of the future CGC Storis will consist of approximately 60 officers and enlisted personnel. They will be assigned in the summer of 2025.”

[Source: Kathy Murray for My CG]

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Golf gets a new look with high-tech indoor league by Cassandra Cassidy (Morning Brew)
TGL has star power in Woods, but the sports world is waiting to see if young fans take to the new age game, or if it flounders like SlamBall.

Cassandra Cassidy concluded a report in Morning Brew about the TGL, a new indoor golf league headlined by Tiger Woods and Rory McIllroy, by asking an open-ended question: “[T]he sports world is waiting to see if young fans take to the new age game, or if it flounders like SlamBall.” [Cassandra Cassidy at Morning Brew (01/07/25)] I submit for the record that when I started reading the article (I had not previously read about TGL), my first thought was SlamBall. Seldom have I ever felt so on the same weve-length as a reporter. All jokes aside, SlamBall, which is roughly basketball-plus-trampolines (I found it vaguely reminiscent of the NBA Street video games), is neat for the first five-to-ten minutes. I remember when ESPN tried to make it a thing in the early 2000s and I watched a couple of games, but its moment came and went quickly. The TGL is similarly (if not more) gimmicky, but it has the advantage of having the biggest name in golf (still Tiger Woods) whereas SlamBall did not feature any broadly recognizable practitioners. You may be wondering how this is a things I learned post. Learning that TGL exists is not very exciting and I noted that I remember watching SlamBall in the early 2000s. While looking for a good SlamBall link, I learned that ESPN apparently planned to air SlamBall in 2023 and 2024. [Katie Hughes Martin for ESPN Press Room (June 21, 2023)] That was the plan at least, but it does not look like SlamBall 2024 happened. [Wikipedia; January 11, 2025 capture of blank 2024 schedule on SlamBall website] In any event, it was (or is) a solid come-back, I assumed that SlamBall had gone the way of the dodo after the first ESPN rodeo in 2002.

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Gloria Murli of Rikers Island Cat Rescue estimates that there are 300-350 feral cats living on Rikers Island. According to The City, there were “:around 1,000” cats in the early 2000s. The New York Times reported on September 1, 2002, that there were then “[u]p to 18 cat colonies” and that the cat population “hit an estimated 250 to 400.” (I am not sure where The City got the 1,000 number.) The cat population was brought under control by a trap-neuter program in the early 2000s. [Sources: Haidee Chu for The City; Tara Bahrampour for The New York Times (2002)]