Tag: persona 4

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You may wonder whether I sometimes go a week or so (a week in this case) without publishing Pook-Emu Bee links because I lack links. Not so. I collect links every day. That makes getting back to Pook-Emu Bee all the more urgent. An out-of-control link backlog is a scary thing.

AI (or SI?) and Tech

1 | Daily News Stuff 29 September 2026 (Ambient Irony. Sep. 29, 2026.)
Incisive analysis of the “rogue” agent phenomenon in four words (“Because they are idiots.”)

2 | Heads of AI firms tell UN Security Council that it could imperil humanity (Seth Borenstein and Jennifer Peltz for AP. Sep, 23, 2026.)
I agree with Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony that this effort is embarrassing on many levels and impractical because the UN does not “have the power to regulate squat.” With that being said, I think the UN may be the perfect forum.

3 | Alabama teens getting their own version of TikTok under sweeping $100M deal (Elaine Mallon for Fox Business. Sep. 26, 2026.)
That’s great but what if we went back and considered that “no TikTok” idea again?

4 | Fwupd 2.1.8 Linux Firmware Updater Is Out Now with Support for More Devices (Marcus Nestor for 9 To 5 Linus. Sep. 24, 2026.)
I’m an Fwupd fan. I was hoping one of the devices would be my ASRock motherboard, which I just updated a couple of weeks ago. Alas. Still cool, however.

New York City News

5 | Safety advocate blames Central Park redesign for pedestrian’s death as cyclist crashes rise (Haley Brown for the New York Post. Sep. 28, 2026.)
Correct. But let us not forget the bikers who are pretending they’re riding in the Tour de France.

6 | Bay Ridge’s beloved Ragamuffin Parade turns 60, celebrating generations of community (Olivia Searman for Brooklyn Paper. Sep. 23, 2026.)
Despite having spent a good amount of time in Bay Ridge in my life, I never heard of this parade. But I nevertheless offer my congratulations.

World News

7 | Leftist South Korea Demands Ukraine Apologize After Zelensky Reveals North Korea Soldiers Shipped to Seoul (Frances Martel for Breitbart. Sep. 28, 2026.)
I personally wouldn’t stake my reputation on the reliability of either party here, but as a general point the one asking everyone for assistance in its existential defensive war should probably err on the side of caution.

8 | US Identifies and Blacklists Three More UNRWA ‘Teachers’ Who Participated in Oct 7 Terror Spree, Kidnapped and Held Israeli Hostages (Adam Kredo for The Washington Free Beacon. Sep. 28, 2026.)
If it makes these three distinguished UNRWA employees feel better, many individuals who have been publicly implicated in October 7 have suffered worse fates than loss of employment opportunities. Wait a second. That probably shouldn’t make them feel better.

Video Game Stories

9 | Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka considers Ultimate Despair Girls the pinnacle of his writing. “I will never be able to write another scenario that surpasses it” (Dorde P for Automation West. Sep. 25, 2026.)
I think I played something between 30% and 40% of Ultimate Despair Girls before losing interest and unsuccessfully including it in an Amazon trade in when I bought my Switch (UPS lost the package…). It was ok but I would have probably finished had I agreed with Mr. Kodaka’s assessment. With that being said, I do like Dangan 1-3, although I would caution against taking them too seriously.

10 | Persona 4 Revival Corrects Aika Nakamura Details, Confirms She Is Not a New Social Link (Orpheus Josha for Noisy Pixel. Sep. 24, 2026.)
I had seen the false report that P4 Revival was adding a new social link and had questions. Persona 4 Golden already tacked on two social links in Aeon and Jester to the original Persona 4. Adding yet another would have probably demanded some re-balancing. The correction to the original erroneous story thus makes sense to me.

11 | Amid “itasha” ban controversy, Forza Horizon 6 devs say moderation is handled by humans and “the number of reports does not matter” (Carlos “Zoto” Zotomayor for Automation West. Sep. 24, 2026.)
I have seen multiple stories about Forza Horizon 6 moderators allegedly banning user-created anime-style designs on in-game cards. Notably, none of the articles actually offer examples of which designs are being flagged. Thus, despite being an anime fan who is largely skeptical of games that have this much of an online component, I would reserve judgment.

Essential Minerals in Moderation

12 | Living the Low-Sodium Lifestyle (Chris O’Donnell. Sep. 24, 2026.) [HT Makoism]
Good blog post. I don’t measure sodium intake in this much detail but like the author, I seldom eat out and I check sodium on nutrition fact labels.

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Liked 9 Games to Know Me (Strange Voyages)
Part of the User Manual Series where I give some brief overviews of the media, experiences, thoughts that help make me...me. Released hourly on my 32nd birthday.

I read a post on the Strange Voyages blog titled 9 Games to Know Me (HT Bubbles Weekly). It caught my interest because the concept struck me as similar (albeit not identical) to my September 2023 article titled Ranking My Big Impression Video Games (see simple list version), wherein I ranked the 12 video games that left the biggest impression on me. The author at Strange Voyages states that he put the list together for his 32nd birthday, which would have him being born in August 1994. Thus, the author a bit younger than me, given that was about when I received my first video game console (model 2 Sega Genesis) and game (Sonic 2) (see my recent discussion). Because early games often have ways of leaving big impressions, a difference in when one first encounters games will likely affect these sorts of lists. With that being said, my big impression list and the Strange Voyages 9 games list both include Persona 4 Golden (I included it in one selection with the original Persona 4). The Strange Voyages list also has later entries in two series I included in mine. Strange Voyages has Pokémon HeartGold while my list had the original Pokémon Gold (to be sure, Heart Gold is a better game than the original Gold/Silver) along with Pokémon Red (which I ranked number one) and Pokémon Ruby. Strange Voyages has Animal Crossing: New Horizons while I had the original Animal Crossing for GameCube.

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Quoted Producer Wada Kazuhisa Talks Persona 4 Revival – Rebuilding Inaba, Reworking Combat, and Keeping the Heart of the Original Intact by Ralph (gamerbraves.com)
Dungeon design also saw a significant overhaul. 'Regarding the dungeons, we’ve mainly decided to make the whole dungeon-playing experience a lot less stressful, that’s one part we decided to do. We also wanted to update the graphics to make it much more immersive,' Wada said.

Gamer Braves conducted an interesting interview with Wada Kazuhisa, who is producer of the upcoming Persona 4 Revival. Long-time NLJ readers may know that I am a Persona 4 fan, although I am not particularly excited for what would be my third version of P4 (I had the original several years before Golden came out). But that aside, were I to recommend one change beyond fancy new graphics and some quality of life improvements, I would recommend fixing the difficulty curve in Persona 4 and Golden. In my humble opinion, the difficulty curve in the otherwise great Persona 4 Golden was broken such that the game became easier as one progressed, and particularly easy in the end-game, in part because the player’s party grows in strength more dramatically than the enemies. I will note that I played both Persona 4 and Persona 4 Golden on Hard (not the two higher difficulties). With that being noted, I am not sure I am on the same wavelength as Mr. Kazuhisa when he says that he is working on making the dungeons “less stressful.” I cleared every dungeon after Kanji’s (the second) in one go, making more time to enjoy the daily life sections.

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I have an assignment I need to finish today. But I will not let that stop me from capping off the work-week with one more edition of Pook-Emu Bee links. Pook-Emu Bee will be off tomorrow for Newsletter Day.

Photograph of a green leafy tree in front of a brick building seen through a chicken wire window.
The scene behind my second monitor as I draft this post.

1. How Mamdani Should Reform New York City’s Elections (John Ketcham and Jack Santucci for City Journal. June 10, 2026.)

Never go full “think tank.” Take a walk. Think about what you are writing.

2. Bluesky is getting Reddit-inspired communities built for topic-focused discussions (Mauricio B. Holguin for AlternativeTo. June 11, 2026.)

Reddit is bad enough without people thinking about how to make worse versions of Reddit.

3. Celtic elite grave discovered in the Taunus mountains (livius for The History Blog. June 9, 2026.)

An elite Celtic grave has been discovered near Bad Camberg in the Taunus mountain range of western Germany. The grave goods are exceptional and include gold, chariot remains and an imported Etruscan bronze jug. It dates to the 5th century B.C. and is the first Celtic princely grave discovered in the Taunus mountains.

The Etruscans force their way into the story.

4. RetroPad is a ‘full-feature-parity version of Notepad from XP’ in just 2,749 bytes — x86 assembly coded apps comes from Windows legend Dave W Plummer (Mark Tyson for Tom’s Hardware. June 7, 2026.)

I used to use Notepad sometimes in my Wndows days (which ended on Windows 10 in 2020). Should I try running this with WINE?

5. Long Island bishop using Knicks’ NBA Finals run to convince long-suffering fans there is a God (Alex Mitchell for the New York Post. June 7, 2026.)

I haven’t watched any NBA games since the 2019 Finals (despite my NBA writing here and on NLJ), but from what I’m hearing through the grapevine he may be making a compelling case here.

6. Brave Software releases Origin for a paid, bloat-free browsing experience (Lawrence Abrams for Bleeping Computer. June 4, 2026.)

I use it for work on my workstation and as my primary browser on my mini PC for my TV. It is good. Of course, I am using free Brave Origin because I run Linux btw.

7. Persona 30th Anniversary Nendoroid Featuring Persona 3, 4, And 5 Protagonists Opens For Pre-Order (Orpheus Joshua for Noisy Pixel. June 5, 2026.)

They’re missing two. If your first thought is the female protagonist from P3P, that is one of the two. But I am more offended by the absence of a different female protagonist… one who was the box cover character for one of the Persona releases.

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Wherein I managed to successfully publish my “daily” Pook-Emu Bee links for a second consecutive day (what a twist!).

Photo of the wide intersection at 3rd Avenue and 2nd Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn. In the center of the photo on an island is what appears to be a multi-colored junk statue.
I took this photograph on the morning of June 8, 2026, on 3rd Avenue and 2nd Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn. I’m not 100% sure what is up with the random statue on the island.

1. Persona 4 Revival Broadcast Announced As Atlus Reveals New Mechanics, Editions, And Screenshots (Orpheus Joshua at Noisy Pixel. June 7, 2026.)

Let no one say I am not a long-standing Persona 4 fan, but $65 for a second re-master of the original Persona 4 is steep before you consider that Atlus will almost certainly release a DLC ($20? $25? $30?) with the extras from Golden. Persona 4 Golden, which is readibly available, is more than good enough for the uninitiated. I previously covered this critically important topic. (PS: I want to note that Atlus has released new versions of Persona 3, 4, and 5 in the ten years since releasing 5… speaking of which.)

2.Persona 6’s horror vibes aren’t convincing Japanese fans who remember Persona 5’s misleadingly grim “You Are Slave” teaser (Dorde P for Automation West. June 8, 2026.)

I vaguely remember the very vague Persona 5 trailer from 2013. Did people really think Persona 5 was going to be dark? I suppose so. With that being said, I would not remind a return to the darker tone of Persona 3 (notwithstanding the fact that Persona 4 Golden is my favorite of the modern Personas).

3. Knicks watch party to be held at Bryant Park after NYC axed planned event outside MSG (Chris Nesi for the New York Post. June 8, 2026.)

The New York Knicks’ Finals games will be on national TV. Anyone can watch with a TV antenna. You don’t even need cable or a streaming service.

4.Congress Throws A-10 Warthog Another Lifeline (Thomas Newdick for The War Zone. June 5, 2026.)

Warts and all?

5. Is hosting the World Cup worth it? (Sam Klebanov for Morning Brew. June 7, 2026.)

No.

6. A Prominent OpenAI Investor Appears to Be Suffering a ChatGPT-Related Mental Health Crisis, His Peers Say (Joe Wilkins for Futurism. July 18, 2025.)

Either that or he had just optimized social media posting by turning over his account to ChatGPT.

7. Noodle Bomb Craft Ramen Sauce Taste Test & Unboxing (Hans Lienesch at The Ramen Rater. May 29, 2026.)

A blog/video post on spicing up your ramen.

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Replied to Persona fans debate whether Persona 4 needs a remake by Carlos (Automation West)
After the success of Persona 3 Reload, fans are starting to wonder which of the other Persona games would deserve a remake. One popular debate that is going on right now is whether a Persona 4 remake done similarly to Persona 3 Reload would be viable at all.

A new article in Automation West described an online debate over whether Persona 4 needs (another) remake. I have documented in the pages of The New Leaf Journal that I am a fan of Persona 4 and of the modern Persona series as a whole. However, count me as being on the side of “some [who] would like Atlus to focus on new projects, such as the hotly anticipated Persona 6.” Persona 4 received an excellent and much needed deluxe (so to speak) version in Persona 4 Golden and that game is readily accessible thanks to its availability on Steam and other platforms. I do not think that modern visuals or game play tweaks (which may only make Persona 4’s unfortunate declining difficulty curve worse) are worth the effort. Persona 3’s reboot (which I have yet to play) is justified in large part thanks to the game’s best version, Persona 3 FES, not being so easily available (especially with the upcoming Answer DLC). Instead of re-making Persona 4, Atlus can apply some lessons from Persona 4, namely its best-in-series social links and character writing, to a whole new game. (I suppose it can learn from the proper difficulty curve in Persona 3 FES).

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The video game magazine Game Informer was shuttered on short notice after having been in business for 33 years. I have written about reading classic game magazines around the turn of the century including Nintendo Power, Expert Gamer, and EGM. Sure enough, I also read Game Informer back in the day (I noted in one post that I remembered the great hatred of some of its reviewers for the early Mario Party games). While I have not been a regular Game Informer reader for about two decades, I did have a specific, self-interested take on the story. I eventually plan to write an article analyzing the Ai Ebihara social link from Persona 4 (idea previewed here). One of my inspirations for the post  is an excellent 2012 Game Informer article by Kimberly Wallace (Wayback Machine link). While all of these articles can be found in the Internet Archive, it would have potentially been annoying to dig up without the URL. Fortunately, I had already saved the URL along with a Wayback archive snapshot in Zotero. (Whew.)