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 main rival 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.
Author Archives: Nicholas A. Ferrell
Things I Learned: 13 U.S. States Ban Ranked-Choice Voting
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.
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).
My Haqqani Bounty Payment Hangs By a Thread
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!
SBInstitutionsBot Visits Picked Up as Visitors
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.)
Things I Learned: Amazon Appstore for Android
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.
Things I Learned: IMDB’s Origins 35 Years Ago
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.
Things I Learned: Brooklyn Borough Hall Deeds
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.
Things I Learned: Ozempic Lizards
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.
Things I Learned: Mars is a Vet Tycoon
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.
Things I Learned: Higurashi When They Cry Phone Game
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).
Inauguration Day
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!)
Things I Learned: The Other Summer’s End Visual Novel
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)
Things I Learned: Robot Vacuum Arms Race
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.
Things I Learned: Official Super Mario World CDs in 1991
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)]
Things I Learned: Check uBlock Origin Settings on Miniflux
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.)