Category: Things I Learned in 2025 (NAF)

A collection of things that Nicholas A. Ferrell learned in 2025. This project builds off my (NAF’s) “54 Things I Learned in 2024” (https://thenewleafjournal.com/b/71Z) article on The New Leaf Journal.

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I read an April 28, 2025 report in Morning Brew titled LTK wants to be creators’ post-social platform of choice. I had heard of L DK, but never LTK. Is it new?

Amber Venz Box started as a creator on WordPress, and founded the platform formerly known as LiketoKnow.it and RewardStyle in 2011 as an affiliate platform for bloggers, which is now often cited as one of the original social commerce platforms.

It is apparently not new. Maybe it is niche?

Internal data shows that most LTK affiliate transactions now happen through or within the LTK platform (as opposed to, say, a link from a social post) and around 38% of millennial and Gen Z women in the US are using LTK, Venz Box said.

According to this, many millennial women are using it. I am obviously not a woman, but I have dated myself as a millennial by birth. Nevertheless, I never heard of this supposedly popular platform. Its being focused on affiliate advertising may explain why. I am good at being ignorant of advertising trends and video creators. While I have no opinion on LTK, I do have one take on one opinion of Amber Venz Box, the creator of LTK:

Ultimately, she said, she doesn’t want to see TikTok go away, particularly due to the platform’s power in democratizing who can become a creator.

 

TikTok should definitely go away.

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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 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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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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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)]