Tag: anime

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I have been busy today, but the weekday streak of Pook-Emu Bee links continues.

1 | California political candidate facing six years in prison after listing dive bar as home address (Marina Peña for the California Post. August 24, 2026.)
This plan was dumb enough to make me wonder whether she lives in a dive bar.

2 | Summer Wars: An Anime With A Cautionary tale About AI (The Ghastly Mirror. August 24, 2026.)
I watched Summer Wars with a friend a long time ago (maybe 2014-15). I recall liking it well enough so I’ll second the recommendation.

3 | Happy 35th Birthday, Linux! (Marius Nestor for Tux Machines. August 25, 2026.)
35? Linux is still just a kid. Happy birthday to my operating system since 2020!

4 | The Data Center Wars – A Massive Proposed Data Center in Texas Drops Request for Tax Abatements (Buck Throckmorton for Ace of Spades HQ. August 25, 2026.)
Pacifico Energy could have saved itself plenty of grief by not requesting the tax abatements in the first place.

5 | 1000 Blog Posts (Chris at Unaccountable Thoughts. July 6, 2026.)
This is 632 here at ECS (not counting my “social” activity posts).

6 | Seen This Week: Butterflies and Fruits (Kate St. John at Outside My Window. August 15, 2026.)
I’m pro-butterfly, so I approve of this photo post. I haven’t seen many in Brooklyn this year but there have been a decent number of bees and dragonflies lately.

7 | Kanon Analysis: Understanding Mai’s Struggle (Zalor at Zalor’s Seminar. July 10, 2026.)
A very interesting in-depth analysis of the struggle of Mai in the excellent 2006-07 anime adaptation of Kanon (on my distant to-review list). This post includes the analysis video along with the full transcript.

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I was working late into the night (unfortunately not on articles), but I am back for another Pook-Emu Bee link (one away from Sunday-Friday perfection before we yield the floor on Saturday for The Newsletter Leaf Journal).

My hand holding a tube of Sensodyne Pronamel Kids Berry Twist toothpaste over a sink.
I use SLS-free toothpaste because of canker sores. I also want toothpaste with fluoride. My options at Lot Less in late July were limited. This is what I came up with (photograph from July 29, 2026).

1 | Some Claude users are mad that Anthropic’s new watermarks will catch them using it at their jobs, classes (Lucas Ropek for TechCrunch. August 12, 2026.)
The thought that these people may be too lazy to paste the output into a text editor and sanitize it is almost as concerning as how lazy they are in using Claude.

2 | Twenty-Five in Blog Years (Dave Peck. August 11, 2026.)
I offer my congratulations to Mr. Peck on his blog’s quarter-century anniversary. What was I doing 25 years ago? Elementary school.

3 | Koei Tecmo releases 90-minute Atelier Ryza ASMR featuring Klaudia, picnics, bathing, and ear-cleaning (Amber V for Automation West. August 13, 2026.)
I think it may be time for “Ryza” to join “Palworld” on my gaming-related Miniflux global block list.

4 | Houston Man Charged For Terroristic Threat Over Anime (Rafael Antonio Pineda for Anime News Network. August 13, 2026.)
His rant raises many questions. I don’t think I want the answers.

5 | Bob Iger, Josh Kushner shockingly purchase Lakers months after Mark Walter became majority owner (Ryan Morik for Fox Business. August 12, 2026.)
I went on record when the Lakers went for $10 billion last year noting that the price struck me as high. To be sure, I was not expecting the Lakers to be flipped for $12 billion just over one year later. Perhaps it has something to do with the report’s note that Mr. Walter is under investigation for tax fraud.

6 | Clicks have killed the Inverted Pyramid (Gordon Meyer. August 8, 2026.)
I have more than 200 feeds in my feed collection and many feed items, so I have more than enough to read to allow me to check out when I see what appears to be a rambling SEO introduction. My bigger problem lately has been seeing obvious indicia of AI junk in articles, which also leads to a quick close.

7 | Rite Aid-Replacing Tower for Corner of Smith and President? (Cate Cocoran for Brownstoner. August 11, 2026.)
That is not the nicest stretch of the Carroll Gardens section of Court Street (it looks better from the air than the ground), so this could be an improvement provided that they do not make it too tall. While I cannot say that I am optimistic, I would agree that Carroll Gardens survives pretty well without the benefit of the historic district designation that neighboring Cobble Hill has.

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Replied to Journal Prompt July by Laura Cameron (The Well-Apportioned Desk)
I found a great list of July journal prompts over at BaronFig from 2024. The thing I love about this list is that there are 50 prompts to choose from ... A few of the ones I want to tackle? ... What is your favorite summer song and why?

Laura Cameron at The Well-Apportioned Desk is wrote a post titled Journal Prompt July. She decided to tackle July journal prompts compiled at the BaronFig blog in 2024. While I do not have a journal, this struck me as promising  JulyReply material, so I looked at the five prompts she singled out as interesting examples and noted “What is your favorite summer song and why?” As I have noted in NLJ articles on the ending song in season one of The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten and my interview with Victor V. Gurbo, I am not a “music guy” by any stretch of the imagination. But I do have some takes on anime and game music, so I can come up with (channeling LeBron James’ 2011 arrival in South Beach) not one, not two, but three summer songs. For context on what I am looking for, not my interest from my review of a 2006 anime localized in English as Living for the Day After Tomorrow in capturing the aesthetics of seasons.

  1. 5 Centimeters Per Second is my favorite anime movie (granting I am more of a TV anime guy than a movie guy). The movie takes place in three acts, and I will venture that it is best known for its cherry blossom motifs and the winter-dominated act one. However, the most technically impressive act (in my humble opinion), act two, takes place entirely in the summer. It is from here I draw my first summer song. The movie’s sixth track, Kanae’s Feelings, is a summer-y take on the anime’s melancholy second track (used in the trailer and act one), Distant Every Day Memories. Both are among my two favorite anime OST, but I dare say my opinion on which is better has evolved and now leans very slightly toward the more down-to-Earth Kanae’s Feelings. (Listen: Original Track on YouTube; (better) Eminence Symphony Orchestra version.)
  2. I watched the 2005 anime adaptation of Key’s Air. I have yet to play the visual novel (on my to-do list). While I cannot say I am a big fan of the Air anime (unlike the 2006-07 adaptation of Kanon, which is a personal favorite anime of mine), it did have what I would rate as an all-timer OST. Natsukage, localized as Summer Lights, distills “summer” into a short OST. (Listen: Visual Novel version (official).)
  3. From 2021-2024, I played, reviewed, and discussed 31 freeware visual novel localizations that had all been translated from Japanese to English from 2005-08 (see my al|together collection). My favorite of these 31 visual novels, all of which remain free to download and read/play, is May Sky, which I wrote enough about to have a collection hub on the subject. May Sky stands out for his spring descriptions of May, but there is a summer component to it as well. This novel has what I would describe as the best overall soundtrack of the 31 novels I reviewed for the project, and the best of its songs happens to relate to the “summer” part of the piece. When I hear An Intermezzo, I find myself thinking that the novel’s maladjusted main couple will be alright. (Listen: An Intermezzo.)

I am sure I could come up with some more songs, but I am satisified with my three selections, which cover movies, anime, and games.

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I have not published “daily” Pook-Emu Bee links since June 23. But today is the start of a new month. Let us turn over a new leaf in July with the Pook-Emu Bee.

Photograph of an inlet pond in Brooklyn Bridge Park with Pier 2 in the immediate background and the Manhattan Skyline in the distant background. We see geese in the water.
I took this photograph in Brooklyn Bridge Park on the morning of July 1, 2026. It is difficult to see here, but there were pigeons and doves on the stone path and ducks on the rocks, so we had a meeting of four varieties of birds by the water.

1. Nina Totenberg Sincerely Apologizes For An Inexplicable Error (Josh Blackman at The Volokh Conspiracy. June 30, 2026.)

Her explanation for falsely reporting that Justice Alito was retiring makes no sense. But then again, even given her partisan impulses (noted by Mr. Blackman in the article), it is hard to figure what the game was here.

2. Meta fights soaring hardware costs by reusing old DDR4 server memory in new DDR5-only servers — custom CXL 2.0 chip marries legacy DDR4-2400 with cutting-edge DDR5-6400 (Anton Shilov for Tom’s Hardware. June 30, 2026.)

Add “Meta has to skimp on RAM” to the reasons why my current 2020 computer build is going to have to be in it for the long haul.

3. Rejecting the Luxury of Hobbies (Ennui Vagaries. June 30, 2026.)

This description of how the social media “influencers” treat “hobbies” sounds like what I would have expected. Of course, this is why I don’t follow the “influencers.”

4. Colo-radical: Socialist Who Called 9/11 ‘Inevitable’ Takes Down 15-Term Incumbent in Denver House Primary (Ethan Barton for The Washington Free Beacon. July 1, 2026.)

I still remember the burning smell from across the river when the Islamist terrorists she plays rhetorical footsie with (that was charitable) flew two planes into the World Trade Center. This scenario would most certainly have been difficult to explain a couple of decades ago.

5. COSMIC Desktop’s Frosted Glass Is Giving Windows Aero Vibes (Michael Larabel for Phoronix. June 2, 2026.)

I thought Vista looked decent back when I used it for a couple of years, so I am unsurprisingly not opposed to this frosted glass aesthetic.

6. America’s immigrant tech workers are paying an uncertainty tax (Ananya Bhattacharya for Rest of World. June 30, 2026.)

This article is confusing in that I can’t figure out if the author sees that the point of the now-temporarily-enjoined H-1B fee and other impending regulatory changes is to produce the outcome he is describing (granting potential disagreements on what the H-1B program is ideally for).

7. Sega’s Crazy Taxi Spins Its Wheels Thanks To Another GenAI Kerfuffle (Damien McFerran for Time Extension. June 30, 2026.)

I choose to remember Sega for inspiring me to take up video games in 1993-94.

8. Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s wild past of fetish parties, drugs and gruesome chicken stunt exposed (Annie Gaus for the New York Post. June 28, 2026.)

Her college life in 2012 sounds much more dramatic than mine watching Puella Magica Madoka in the Brooklyn College library with a friend. With that being said, I can look past many questionable college life choices if she manages to fix the whole blinding headlights issue.

9. Two new Casio Vintage watches with step tracker, bluetooth on their way (Anubhav Sharma for Notebook Check. June 29, 2026.)

I might be interested if they work with Gadgetbridge. My atomic non-smart watch is a Casio and I am a fan.

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Liked Shiki (Anime Review) by Cabbage (Cabbage Sorter)
I had Shiki on hold since 2013 ... When I first watched it, I couldn't get past the hair, it was too much. It wasn't just the hairstyles though, I clearly remember feeling overwhelmed by a gazillion characters being introduced at a lightning pace and that was also too much. I'm not immune to propaganda however, and after seeing a few positive reviews about it in quick succession I finally picked it back up again. And I really loved it!

I follow the excellent Cabbage Sorter blog for fun articles about and reviews of anime, manga, and novels (not to mention entertaining posts on other subjects). Here, she reviewed the 2010 anime version of Shiki, which is an adaptation of a serialized horror novel of the same name. She notes that she first tried to watch it in 2013 before dropping it and picking it up again in 2026. 2010 was the first year I recall watching anime simulcasts, but I missed Shiki at the time. I picked it up well after it first aired (I want to say 2019-20). I was persuaded because (1) I saw it on Crunchyroll, (2) I saw it had decent reviews, and (3) it dawned on me that I have not seen many anime in the horror genre. On the whole, I agree with Cabbage that it is a solid anime and largely succeeds in “not taking itself way too seriously” while nevertheless being grim and violent. I am not sure that my assessment would be quite as positive as her’s, but I would rate Shiki as the sort of anime that could have appeal to some potential anime viewers who like its genre and niche but do not have any other experience with or interest in anime as a medium (I may have included it as an additional recommendation in my 2020 article recommending anime from that decade for general audiences had I not opted for the 1-to-0 decade).

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I am a bit late on today’s Pook-Emu Bee links, but the links are better late than never.

1. Ghost CMS SQL injection flaw exploited in large-scale ClickFix campaign (Bill Toulas for Bleeping Computer. May 24, 2026.)

PSA for those of your running Ghost. Not WordPress, for once. Winning over here.

2. Former Nintendo exec confirms NES and SNES Classics were made to sustain the company’s business during Wii U’s dark days (Brian at Nintendo Everything. May 23, 2026.)

I had taken it for granted that the Wii U’s robust virtual console lineup was a response to the fact that no one bought the Wii U.

3. Japanese voice actress Kana Hanazawa literally ate her audition script to get her role in the 2010 Book Girl anime movie (Carlos “Zoto” Zotomayor for at Automation West. May 25, 2026.)

Talk about being in character (I never saw “Book Girl”)

4. Dungeon Minesweeper Switch Review (Game Slush Pile. October 30, 2025.)

That looks like a clever Minesweeper take. I have a Minesweeper article I started in 2024 and never finished. I should get back on that.

5. Massie Doesn’t Rule Out 2028 Presidential Run (Pam Key for Breitbart. May 24, 2026.)

In related news: I’m not ruling out running for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2028.

6. Whoever holds your dream gets to take it away (Herbert Lui. May 24, 2026.)

This is one reason I’m hedging on the plan I described in response to link 5.

7. Wilt Chamberlain would be transcendent in today’s NBA as we watch the rebirth of the big man (Shamus Clancy. May 19, 2026.)

I’m inclined to agree that Wilt Chamberlain would be a great player in any era. But you can’t extrapolate from his 1960s stats like Mr. Clancy does when he writes:

After San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama pulled off a Wilt-esque 41-point, 24-rebound, three-assist, three-block performance in the Spurs’ Game 1 win in the Western Conference Finals on Monday evening, it just felt apt to recontextualize Chamberlain as a whole making stat lines like that a nightly occurrence.

As I demonstrated in a recent article, the pace of play was extraordinarily high when Chamberlain had his highest scoring seasons. Moreover, Chamberlain’s offensive repertoire, which was arguably dated when his career wound down in the 1970s, would not be effective today (the same could be said of trying to translate step-back three pointers to Chamberlain’s era). But had Chamberlain been an up-and-coming prospect in the 2000s or 2010s instead of 1950s, there is no doubt he would have developed differently.

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After two missed days due to having many work assignments, I return with a new edition of my Pook-Emu Bee links. Of course, there are no Pook-Emu Bee links tomorrow because of the newsletter and Sunday is hit and miss, so I encourage you to thoroughly enjoy today’s links.

1. Microsoft BitLocker-protected drives can now be opened with just some files on a USB stick — YellowKey zero-day exploit demonstrates an apparent backdoor (Bruno Ferreira for Tom’s Hardware. May 13, 2026.)

I had never heard of Bitlocker until one day in 2022 when someone I know was locked out of his Windows PC due to BitLocker. He managed to get back in but I dare say this security vulnerability could have been very useful. (HT Ambient Irony.)

2. Just stop using these (Hazn. May 13, 2026.)

I largely agree. If only everyone would just stop using those.

3. I want to comment on your blog post (Forking Mad. June 13, 2025.)

I respect the take but the spam on the one NLJ page I have with comments, the Guestbook, is already apocalyptic. But this did give me a fun idea. Stay-tuned.

4. New agents.txt file found on DreamHost (Kelson at K-Squared Ramblings. May 13, 2026.)

VPS providers should probably refrain from “retroactively” adding agents.txt or other files to live websites. At a minimum, I would suggest a warning and explanation.

5. WataMote anime studio Silver Link sees financial losses for third consecutive year, despite revenue growth (Carlos “Zoto” Zotomayor for Automation West. May 14, 2026.)

WataMote aired in 2013 and was not particularly good (I would classify it as “OK”). Thus, my first thought when I read the article was “well yes, if your best example of the studio’s work is a mediocre meme anime that aired 13 years ago.” But Silver Link handled all three seasons of Non Non Biyori, all of which were good (especially season two, which aired in 2015) and the third of which was my fourth-ranked TV anime of 2021. With that being said, Silver Link’s output is a bit bleak. Tearmoon Empire (2023) and Kokoro Connect (2012) were decent. I remember liking the first half of Tanaka-kun Is Always Listless back in 2016. Maybe I should finish that.

6. Android 17, Gemini Intelligence, and Googlebook: My first impressions (Rodrigo Ghedin at Manual do Usuário. May 13, 2026.)

I’m starting to see why Android is taking some dark turns.

7. The Dark Side of Unitree Robot Dogs (Maya Posch for Hackaday. May 12, 2026.)

When digging further into the robot, he found an easy to exploit arbitrary command execution flaw via the Wi-Fi password entry field, a year-old CVE-2025-2894 exploit, as well as highly suspicious traffic to Chinese servers whenever the robot’s software figured that it was not being watched.

I could have guessed the second part without the benefit of the completed research.

8. reMarkable’s Paper Pure is a $399 E Ink writing tablet that replaces the reMarkable 2 (Brad Linder for Liliputing. May 6, 2026.)

No backlight is an interesting design choice. Very nostalgic to me as someone who grew up using a Worm Light with my Game Boy Color.

9. Pedal parking: DOT plans 500 new bike hubs for NYC streets; online feedback encouraged (Barbara Russo-Lennon for amNY. May 4, 2026.)

I will spoil the feedback process for anyone who questions unlimited accommodations for bikes (including effective exemption from traffic laws) in New York City. Heads, bikes win. Tails, you lose.

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I missed publishing daily Pook-Emu Bee links yesterday due to a work deadline. But we are back today with nine new links from around the world wide web.

1. Famed Atheist Richard Dawkins — Author of ‘The God Delusion’ — Believes AI Is Conscious (Scott Pinsker for PJ Media. May 5, 2026.)

My conscious brain is struggling to decide which of many possible one-liners to go with. Let us keep it simple and just say that I guess Mr. Dawkins is taking a leap of faith in the pages of UnHerd. (Now that he is done, I humbly and respectfully suggest that he put away the electronic devices and go outside.)

2. The NIH Has a Chance to End a 35-Year Taxpayer-Funded Failure (Liam Gray and Ryan Merkley for PJ Media. May 5, 2026.)

No beagles would be hurt in that operation.

3. NYC judge ponders hellish squatter’s right to ‘liberty’ — as tenants live in fear: ‘What more does it take?’ (Peter Senzamici and Georgett Roberts for the New York Post. May 5, 2026.)

Law abiding citizens have a way of coming in last in New York City.

4. Tensions Continue to Brew at Brooklyn Marine Terminal Board Meeting (Andrew Karpan for Brooklyn Reader. May 4, 2026.)

Karen Blondel, president of the Red Hook West Resident Association, said she was not happy with being “intimidated” by volunteers from the Columbia Waterfront Neighborhood Association, that allegedly likened her to President Donald Trump as she sees opportunity for the NYCHA housing complex to join the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) program, which would fund overdue renovations by bringing in private management.,

I appreciate that what we have here is a purely internecine Democrat struggle involving people in 90-10 Democrat neighborhoods in a city with single-party Democrat government, and their frame of reference for insulting each other is President Trump. Localism is dead. Long-live localism.

5. Answerman – The Crunchyroll Anime Awards (Jerome Mazandarani for Anime News Network. May 4, 2026.)

I will submit for the record that I did not take the Crunchyroll Anime Awards seriously when I wrote about my picks last year. But my not taking them seriously is not why I am not publishing my picks for this year. That would be because I am almost a full year behind on anime at this point.

6. Mythos, Not the Iran War, Is the Most Significant Geopolitical Warning of Our Time (Frederick Kempe for Atlantic Council. April 30, 2026.)

While I am not a big fan of the big AI players, I begrudgingly respect their ability to generate earned media coverage and free advertising from all corners of the internet.

7. Critics question whether keffiyeh-wearing Mamdani staffer was sending message of hate (Doree Lewak for the New York Post. May 2, 2026.)

Speaking of begrudging, while I do not respect the outfit or the use of my tax money for never-ending campaign operations, I must begrudgingly respect the trolling.

8. The tournament is expanding. God help us all (Eamonn Brennan. April 29, 2026.)

Expanding March Madness is obviously a money-grab, but in the end I must side with the disaffected take that it will not ultimately negatively effect the quality of play.

9. Bunny Garden 2 debuts as Japan’s number one top-selling game on both Steam and Switch (Dorde P for Automation West. April 17, 2026.)

I have reviewed many Japanese visual novels. But this leads me to believe I do not have my finger on the pulse of what is popular over there.

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There were no Pook-Emu Bee links on Saturday because it was newsletter day (22 links in issue 275!). There were no Pook-Emu Bee links on Sunday because I failed. But today is Monday. Monday is a fun day. I will not fail. In fact, I may even have some bonus links (either to make up for yesterday or to keep my link list under control).

1. 420 Court’s Façade Takes Shape in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn (Michael Young and Matt Pruznick for New York YIMBY. April 13, 2026.)

Carroll Gardens is next to Cobble Hill, which is one of Brooklyn’s historic districts. The line between Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill is easy to miss. Yet, as I noted in 2020, Carroll Gardens is not a historic district. With that in mind, this new construction is not bad.

2. Placard Abuse Clogs Downtown Brooklyn Bike Lane (Brooklyn Today. April 13, 2026.)

Placard abuse is a well-known problem. But must everything be about the struggles of bikers? The bikers in the area behave terribly even where the bike lanes are unimpeded.

3. Investors Juice BlackBerry as the SaaS-y Company Racks Up Contracts (Jamie Wilde for The Daily Upside*. April 13, 2026.)

Making QWERTY phones offered more value.

4. Morgan Library (I Love Beets. April 13, 2026.)

I have not been to the Morgan Library in a long time, but these photographs indicate that it is as aesthetic as I remember it.

5. ProPublica journalists walk off the job in first U.S. newsroom strike over AI (Andrew Deck for NiemanLab. April 9, 2026.)

I reached the “choose your fighter” screen between ProPublica and big AI. Then I left the game on and went for a walk.

6. Doki Doki Literature Club Removed from Google Play Store Following Policy Violation or Is This Just Another Attempt by Monika for Our Attention? (It’s Not, They Really Delisted It) (Azario Lopez for Noisy Pixel. April 9, 2026.)

While I never “reviewed” Doki Doki Literature Club, I referenced it in my review of a freeware visual novel called Save the Date in expressing my hope that Save the Date would be published on Steam, Itch, and other places where more people could find it. I never played the “paid” version of Doki Doki Literature Club, but from my knowledge of the free version, this decision strikes me as odd. It certainly deserves an “M” rating (which I presumre age-gates downloads/purchases) but I am sure there is more objectionable “content” on Google Play Store. Of course, I use F-Droid, so what do I know?

7. The Death of the Small Point Guard? (James Barlowe. April 10, 2026.)

Is there really a “death”? How many instances in NBA history have we had where the undisputed best player on a championship team was a “small” point guard? Off the top of my head: 2014-15 and 2022-23 Golden State Warriors (Stephen Curry), 1988-89 and 89-90 Detroit Pistons (Isiah Thomas), and 1972-73 New York Knicks (Walt Frazier). You could argue for a few additional cases in the 1950-51 Rochester Royals (Bob Davies), 1969-70 Knicks (Frazier). 2003-04 Pistons (Chauncey Billups), and 2016-17 and 2017-18 Warriors (Curry). I suppose one could try to include Dennis Johnson since he was “small” and add the 1978-79 Seattle SuperSonics? But if this is all we can come up with, it does not seem like building a team “around” a small point guard has ever been the best path to an NBA championship.

8. Ascendance of a Bookworm anime studio acknowledges gen AI use in opening, promises to replace offending scenes with hand-drawn art (Dorde P for Automation West. April 10, 2026.)

I never watched the first few seasons, and I doubt I will ever catch up. Were I planning to catch up, this would not encourage me. With that being said, I have 2.5 seasons worth of anime to catch up on. Every news article reminds me.

9. Friends Don’t Let Friends Play Monopoly (Dan Lewis for Now I Know. April 3, 2020.)

I never played Monopoly. No one ever tried to convince me to play Monopoly. Now I know that Dan Lewis does not think I should play Monopoly.

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The Pook-Emu Bee, your favorite (or “favourite” if you prefer British English) daily links collection, returns after taking two days off for Newsletter Leaf Journal Saturday and Easter.

1. E-Bikes = Freedom (Matthew Morgan at World of Matthew. April 6, 2026.)

The “Why the hatred of e-bikes?” section summarizes my feelings about e-bikes in Brooklyn, New York City.

2. Mamdani signs ’emergency’ order to block concerts, food festivals at NYC parks during FIFA World Cup (Carl Campanile for the New York Post. April 6, 2026.)

The actual policy does not affect me. But I include the link to note that the World Cup games are being played in New Jersey, not New York City. After the Mayor suggested last week that being able to commute across the Brooklyn Bridge has something to do with accessing World Cup matches in New Jersey, I am beginning to think the leadership of New York City is suffering from some sort of collective delusion.

3. AI-Generated Data Can Poison Future AI Models (Rahul Rao for Scientific American. July 28, 2023.)

This bridge had been crossed before this article was published in July 2023.

4. Noelia Castillo Ramos and the Dictatorship of Happiness (Tiare Gatti Mora for Compact. April 3, 2026.)

What we value is no longer a meaningful life, but a life in which we achieve and maintain a positive emotional state.

5. George Harrison Explains Why Everyone Should Play the Ukulele (Open Culture. October 16, 2024.)

My first thought when I read this was Haruko’s “ukulele no good” line in episode 3 of FLCL. Of course, she was using the ukulele as a weapon, which was a very different use-case than what George Harrison had in mind.

6. Claude Code’s source reveals extent of system access (Thomas Claburn for The Register. April 1, 2026.)

I employ a secret method to ensure that Claude does not have access to my system. I won’t reveal it (proprietary, unlike some of Claude’s source code now), but I will tell you that I achieve it without installing anything.

7. Rookies almost never make good teams better (Henry Abbott at TrueHoop. April 3, 2026.)

Despite being the person who wrote an entire essay arguing the contrarian position that the Detroit Pistons would not have been better off had they drafted Carmelo Anthony over Darko Milicic in 2003, Mr. Abbott’s position is far too extreme for my taste. For example, while he notes that Cooper Flagg’s advanced stats are middling, I do not think it follows that Flagg would not have potentially made a good team better in a smaller role than he is playing for the Mavericks.

8. Microsoft inches closer to glass storage breakthrough that could finally make ransomware attacks impossible in the data center and hyperscalers — but only Azure customers will benefit from it (Keumars Afifi-Sabet for Tech Radar. December 6, 2023.)

Glass storage looks aesthetic. I approve.

9. The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya 20th Anniversary Project Revealed With New PV And Art (Orpheus Joshua for Noisy Pixel. April 3, 2026.)

I watched Haruhi a few years after it aired in 2006. The titular character is still an all-timer in 2D person stage presence. (I referenced her in my best female character award section for 2024 and in a short post about anime characters with brown hair). Haruhi also informed my articles on Halloween in Japan and anime characters with brown hair. Haruhi as a show? I still think it is good but it is certainly not the best-aging show of the era. Speaking of the era, I need to do a 2006 Anime Review at some point. 2006 was loaded. Of course, I need to write 2025 first…

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Quoted Takopi's Original Sin [Anime Review] by Cabbage (Cabbage Sorter)
This anime feels bait-y. Something about the families and the abuse being suffered, it's too clean and clinical feeling, the abusive parents are too perfectly cruel, all of them being hateable. I was also frustrated by the lack of intervention from anyone's part.

Cabbage reviwed the anime adaptation of Takopi’s Original Sin on her always-fun Cabbage Sorter blog. Takopi was a short six-episode series which aired in summer season 2025. It was one of the last shows I watched before I started failing and fell approximately 2.5 anime seasons behind (thus greatly delaying my 2025 anime review article). I agree in the main with Cabbage’s review of Takopi. The show held my attention, but it suffers from giving the impression of being a thought experiment too oftent delivered with 2×4-to-the-face subtlety. It held my attention in a “what will go sideways next?” kind of way, but I can’t call it good (especially after the strange ending).

But the reason I share Cabbage’s review is less about Takopi itself (which will not be eligible for any of my 2025 TV anime awards in any event since it is not a full-length season) and more about my own prior reviews. From 2021-2024, I wrote full reviews of 29 of the 31 visual novels that were officially part of the 2005, 2006, and 2008 al|together visual novel localization festivals, and I concluded my review project by ranking the novels from 31-1. The most well-known of the al|together novels and the highest regarded outside Japan (I cannot speak for inside Japan) is the depressing Narcissu, which I reviwed here. Despite Narcissu’s critical acclaim on VNDB, I ended up ranking it just 8th in my final al|together evaluation. While I do think Narcissu is an objectively good piece in the final evaluation, I had issues with it. One of those issues was its tendency to make the people surrounding the terminally ill main duo “too perfectly” callous (if not “cruel”) and dumb. It made the piece feel “too clean and clinical” (that and some other lapses in realism) in an effort to raise, if not answer, a particular question the author wanted to ask. Those issues ultimately relegated one of the highest quality submissions to the al|together festival (and a genuinely important historical piece in the English visual novel localization scene) to the latter-half of my al|together top-10. (I will note some of the tendencies of author Tomo Kataoka that I did not like in Narcissu were tempered for the better in his more recent work, Christmas Tina.

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There was no Pook-Emu Bee links yesterday because it was newsletter day. But I am back early this Sunday morning (before I go to bed) with the first edition of the Pook-Emu Bee for the new week.

1. The Bird of Paradise you want is NOT the best one to grow in your house (Alex Calamia for News 12 Brooklyn. March 18, 2026.)

My first thought was the avian bird of paradise.

2. The Vapidity of Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends (John Hinderaker for Power Line. February 9, 2026.)

I concur that even were one to remove all of the illegal unpleasantness, he does not give off the impression of having been a deep thinker.

3. NYPD, FDNY ready to renew their on-ice rivalry Sunday at UBS Arena (Alex Mitchell for the New York Post. March 28, 2026.)

A match where it’s easy to root for both teams.

4. FBI boss Kash Patel HACKED by Iran as private photos and emails leak (Ross Ibbetson and Nikki Schwab for Daily Mail. March 27, 2026.)

This is an impressively lacklustre hack.

5. Moroccan professor allegedly abandons children in Spain to secure state care for them (Carl Deconinck for Brussels Signal. March 27, 2026.)

It sounds like you have to jump through a few more hoops to game the system in Spain than you do in the United States (see Sppecial Immigrant Juvenile program).

6. VNDB Founder Yorhel Passes Away, Website Preservation Efforts Underway (Orpheus Joshua for Noisy Pixel. March 21, 2026.)

Very sad news from VNDB, a resource I have cited to in all of my many visual novel reviews on NLJ. I never looked into the team behind VNDB, but I send my condolances. I hope the site can stay up and running as is without any burdunsome moves.

7. Why is One of the Most-Anticipated Anime of the Season Airing on YouTube? (Jerome Mazandarani for Anime News Network. March 11, 2026.)

Even as a Crunchyroll and HiDive subscriber, I would approve of this trend. Of course, I just need to start watching stuff if I am ever going to publish my 2025 anime review.

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I am writing an article about Marginalia Search. I wanted to check something on the search results page. Since Marginalia is good at turning up small web and vintage websites and articles, I decided to search for an old school unsung Pokémon. After thinking for about 15 seconds, I settled on Seadra. Seadra seems like a good choice for an obscure generation one Pokémon. It was a standard water-type Pokémon and final-stage evolution in generation one. It received a new evolution in generation two, turning Seadra into a middle-stage Pokémon (with a stat hit to boot). I will venture that very few kids back in my day focused their energy on evoloving Horsea into Seadra for their in-game teams. (Seadra did have a moment in the Orange Islands arc of the anime, however. I will submit for the record that I remembered the first Orange Islands gym leader used Seadra off the top of my head.)

I ran a search and saw what I wanted to see on the results page. Then I started scrolling through the actual results for the search query. The desciption for one result caught my attention:

Seadra Cosplay: A woman dressed in a vibrant blue and yellow costume, reminiscent of the Pokémon character Seadra. The woman’s hair is styled to resemble Seadra’s fins, adding an extra layer of authenticity to her cosplay. Her outfit features a flowing sk …

Seadra cosplay? I clicked the link. Sure enough, courtesy of Yerna Photography, there is a woman sitting a forest setting dressed as a Seadra. This photo is from 2019. I wonder how she became a Seadra fan. I will submit for the record that I have never understood cosplay despite being a well-documented anime fan. But in my non-expert opinion, here Seadra cosplay seems very well put together and thought out. I tip my hat both to the cosplay effort and photography and to giving what I consider to be an “obscure” generation one Pokémon a moment in the sun. (I wonder if she used Seadra when she was a kid.)

Cosplay aside, I like how the Yerna Photography site presents the photographs. On the Seadra page I liked to above, note the “Yerna Color Index” section which shows, and names, the eight most prominent colors in the image. Clicking on any colors takes the visitor to all photographs featuring that color. That is a great touch to go along with the standard metadata about the photograph and image description.

You never know what you will find on Marginalia Search…

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Quoted The Best Anime of Winter 2026 by Kevin Cormack (Anime News Network)
Frieren is now the new gateway drug to recommend to potential new anime fans, with the only downside that almost no other anime can hope to measure up.

Anime News Network does a “best of” run-down at the end of every anime season. I decided to check out the Winter 2026 season review to see what I should watch in a couple of months after I catch up on the summer and fall 2025 seasons. The staff ranked Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Season 2 as the eighth best show of winter 2026. Kevin Cormack wrote the entry for Frieren S2, stating that “almost no other anime can hope to measure up.” While I am led to believe that these season rankings are a composite staff ranking, it is a bit jarring to read in the commentary for the “8th” best show of the season that “almost no other anime can hope to measure up.”

(For whatever it is worth, I am a bit sour on Frieren after the first season concluded with a meandering and ultimately self-refuting arc which took up the last third of the season, but I will watch the second season and see if it redeems itself.)