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This Week in Anime - Sophomore Slump (Anime News Network)
Coop and Chris try to answer the eternal question: does it matter if the sequel is as good if it takes too long to show up?

I came across an interesting Anime News Network discussion prompt asking whether it “matter[s] if the sequel [to an anime] is as good [as the first season] if it takes too long to show up?” The two participants in the discussion cite examples where it does seem to matter in a commercial sense. From my perspective, a long delay between seasons can be irritating in that I need to go back and refresh myself on the prior season(s). I distinctly recall having that issue with the second season of Re:Zero back in 2021 (the first season aired in 2016). But as long as the new season is good and worthwhile, I am not worried from a viewer perspective. The third and final season of My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU (aka Oregairu) was the easy choice for my TV anime of the year nod in 2020, notwithstanding the five-year gap between the second and third seasons. I still insist on a third season of the best series of the previous decade, March Comes in like a Lion, despite the fact that the second season finished airing seven years ago. (Aside: While I have yet to watch the third season of Kimi ni Todoke, which aired 12 years after the second, I appreciate that it helped bring attention to my Kimi ni Todoke hair color study.)

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From Reuters:

Chinese producers of plastic Christmas trees and other festive decorations say orders from U.S. clients, which are crucial for their business, should have started to come in by now. But because of surging import tariffs, they haven’t.

[Reuters, April 10, 2025]

I never had a plastic Christmas Tree. But I recall having said something about the fact that they tend to come from China to a friend a few months ago. Should the center-piece of many Christmas living roons be made in a country that persecutes Christians as a matter of state policy?

In cheerier Christmas Tree news, I published many fun Christmas Tree links in Newsletter Leaf Journal 166, which hit inboxes and feed readers on December 23, 2023.

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Earlier today, I posted about the 65-year old Fred Couples shooting one under par in the first round of The Masters and thus placing him in good position to break his own record as the oldest golfer to make the cut at Augusta National. But while Mr. Couples may become the oldest golfer to make a Masters cut, he will have to leave the record for oldest golfer to have a Masters round. I quote from ESPN UK:

Fred Couples, who wondered a month ago if at 65 with a creaky back he would still be welcomed to play, became only the second player that age to break par … Tom Watson was also 65 — by 28 days he is still the oldest — when he shot 71 in 2015.

[ESPN UK, April 10, 2025]

I do not think I knew that record. However, Mr. Watson featured prominently in my article on the oldest golfers to contend at major championships, notably for his near-win at the 2009 Open Championship at age 59. While I did not recall Mr. Watson’s 71 in 2015, I did make a note of his performance at the 2010 Masters coming off almost winning the British Open nine months earlier.

Tom Watson did not contend for another major, but he would make the cut in five majors after turning 60. His best showing was a tie for 18th place at the 2010 Masters, wherein he was one shot behind the leader – Fred Couples (age 50) – after a first round 67.

Mr. Couples finished sixth at the 2010 Masters after leading at the end of round one. He narrowly missed my cut-off criteria for oldest golfers to contend at majors (my criteria was (1) older than 48 years, 4 months, and 18 days; and (2) top-five finish or within five shots of the winner).

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I noted in an article on the oldest golfers to contend for major championships that Fred Couples has always been a favorite of mine (thanks in no small part to Fred Couples Golf for Sega Game Gear). Mr. Couples is 65 years old, having reached the milestone on October 3, 2024. While he competes almost exclusively on golf’s 50-and-over Champions Tour these days, he is competing in his 40th Masters this week with his lifetime exemption from his 1992 victory. Mr. Couples shot an impressive (in general, but especially for a 65-year old) one-under 71 in the first round, thanks in large part to a chip-in birdie on the first hole and holing out from 191 yards for eagle on the par-four 14th. While I would be surprised to see Mr. Couples close enough to the lead on Sunday to qualify as a new addition to my oldest golfers to contend for major championships list, he is in good position to break the record for the oldest golfer to make the cut at the Masters. The record holder is Fred Couples, who set the existing mark in 2023. But Mr. Couples may not control his own record destiny. The 67-year old Bernhard Langer (1985 and 1993 Masters Champion), who is competing in his final Masters, shot a two-over 74, which gives him a chance to make the weekend in his farewell Masters if he posts a solid second round tomorrow.

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I read an article on Liliputing about Tinker WriterDeck OS earlier today (Liliputing. April 7, 2025). What is Tinker WriterDeck OS? I turn to Liliputing:

But if you’ve already got an old laptop lying around, maybe there’s no need to build or purchase anything new. You could just use distraction-free software. And that’s exactly where Tinker WriterDeck OS comes in: it’s a free and open source operating system that can be installed on just about any old laptop that you may have lying around to turn it into a distraction-free tool for writing… and not much else.

I happened to have a very old ASUS netbook (2 GB RAM, spinning HDD) laying around. Moreover, I had nothing much to do with it given that I have two more capable laptops. There was only one thing to do…

ASUS netbook showing the tilde text editor in Tinker WriterDeck OS on first boot.

This is admittedly not the best picture, but rest assured that this is Tinker WriterDeck OS freshly installed on my netbook. I was impressed with how quick and easy the installation was, thanks in no small part to very concise docs. I confirmed everything works. Look forward to an exciting article about Tinker WriterDeck OS drafted on my newly configured netbook.

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I have heard of Tinder, but I have not used Tinder (or any other dating app or service for that matter), so all I know about it is what I read. I had been under the impression that Tinder was a dating/hook-up app for people to meet or meet other people. However, I was disabused of this notion by an April 2, 2025 report by Matty Merritt for Morning Brew titled Tinder wants you to win a date with an AI chatbot (Morning Brew, April 2, 2025). I quote from this important report:

Users receive a virtual deck of cards with unique scenarios and personae to flirt with via the speech-to-speech tech. The goal is to charm the bot with voice memos and score a date before time runs out…

The article notes that Tinder launched the game on April Fools. Sadly, it seems to be no joke (as in existing, it is definitely a joke in a grander sense).

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I have been watching an anime called Trillion Game since it began in the fall 2024 season. It continued into the winter season. According to Anime News Network, we have a two-part season (I hope season and not series) finale on March 27. While I an loath to offer to many spoilers for my eventual year-end anime ranking (see my 2024 list), Trillion Game is a decent finale away from (likely) being the first-quarter front-runner in 2025 (granting its another fun show also wraps up tomorrow). Of course, you never want to count your chickens before they hatch. At least one of the better shows of the season did not stick the landing.

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Courtesy of Just the News:

West Virginia and Wyoming are the latest two states to ban ranked-choice voting (RCV), bringing the total number of states prohibiting the election system to 13.

Natasha Mittelstadt for Just the News (March 21, 2025)

To be sure, it should be 50 states, but we have to start somewhere. Baby steps to giant strides and all. Of course my home jurisdiction (New York City) seems to rapidly going in the opposite direction of West Virginia and Wyoming (that is true on many matters).

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I Have Information That Could Lead to the Arrest of Sirajuddin Haqqani by Nicholas A. Ferrell (thenewleafjournal.com)
Using open source intelligence tools (basic web search), I reported that I had information regarding the whereabouts of Sirajuddin Haqqani, who was wanted by the FBI.

Back in 2021, I briefly moonlit as an OSNIT analyst and used The New Leaf Journal to inform the United States Government that I had information regarding the whereabouts of Sirajuddin Haqqani, who had a bounty of up to $10 million on his head. By “OSNIT,” I mean I shared a news report about Mr. Haqqani being appointed as the new Interior Minister of Afghanistan. Several years have passed. Mr. Haqqani continues to be the Interior Minister of Afghanistan. I have yet to receive an award. Thus, I read with some concern this morning that Mr. Haqqani is no longer subject to a bounty by the U.S. government. What is my concern? I still haven’t received by award! No take-backs!

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Koko Analytics Recording SBInstitutionsBot/0.1 Requests as Visitors/Page Visits · Issue #296 · ibericode/koko-analytics by nafnlj (GitHub)
My Set-Up I run the non-pro version of Koko Analytics on my WordPress site. I disable cookies and exclude visits from all logged-in users. What Happened? On two separate days, Koko Analytics was sh...

On March `12 and 19, I received a highly unusual number of visitors and page views on The New Leaf Journal according to Koko Analytics. By “unusual,” I mean about 10X as many visitors as expected. No individual article had an unusual number of views and my Koko Analytics stats showed the usual list of referrers (mostly search engines) at usual referral numbers. I checked by server logs on the 19th and determined that the likely culprit was SBInstitutionsBot/0.1 (it appears to be a Japanese web crawler for AI), which was hammering my site with requests as I was seeing unusually high visitor numbers. I used Jeff Starr’s BBQ Pro firewall plugin to block the bot. My Koko Analytics stats quickly returned to normal. I reported the issue to Koko Analytics on GitHub, so I hope the relevant IP addresses are added to the do not count list if it turns out that my diagnosis was correct. (In any event, one of my former visitors, PoorlyConfiguredWebCrawler, was much better behaved than SBInstitutionsBot.)

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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.