The Emu Café Social

Another weekday means another set of Poook-Emu Bee links. I photographed this suit case on August 14, 2026, on Court Street between DeGraw and Sackett. Only the brave wheels away a “free” suitcase in Brooklyn. 1 | Jeanie Buss battling siblings over sale of remaining Lakers shares to new ownership group: reports (Scott Thompson for Fox Business. August 17, 2026.) The unfortunate ramifications of sidelining your siblings for your own benefit. Your siblings, now having little stake in the…

Quoted Shoppers are still spending on expensive dairy products amid inflation by Matty Merritt (Morning Brew) With grocery item costs up everywhere, even $10 butter feels like a reasonable little treat. Writing for Morning Brew, Matty Merritt covered “luxury butter.” According to the author: “With grocery item costs up everywhere, even $10 butter feels like a reasonable little treat.” I live in an expensive area of Brooklyn, New York City (even by the general standards of Brooklyn) and I would…

Pook-Emu Bee was off Saturday for the newsletter and off Sunday because I had work to finish, but we return on this fun Monday for our regularly scheduled links from around the web. I made almond milk hot chocolate last night. Should I share my recipes? Add it to the to-do list. Links & Commentary 1 | Teenage tourist stabbed in ‘unprovoked’ attack inside McDonald’s near Times Square: sources (Joe Marino, Amanda Woods, and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon. August 17, 2026.) Note for tourists: Being anywhere…

Let us complete our perfect Pook-Emu Bee link week before our regularly scheduled day off for Newsletter Saturday. I spotted this TV cabinet in Downtown Brooklyn at approximately 7:40 in the evening on June 28, 2026. The note says “Free / Good Condition” 1 | Sekiwake Wakatakakage Begins Rehabilitation After Narrowly Avoiding Leg Amputation in Emergency Surgery (Sumostats. July 29, 2026.) Scary stuff. Hoping first for a safe and speedy recovery and second for him to quickly return to the lofty…

Liked 5 apps new Linux users should install on day one by Dibakar Ghosh (How-To Geek) Most Linux distros are intentionally minimal to avoid bloat, offering a fresh and clean environment. While this is a major perk, knowing what to install first can be tricky for newcomers. So, to help kickstart your journey, here are five essential apps that belong on every new Linux PC. I read a How to Geek blog post titled 5 apps new Linux users should install on day one (HT Tux Machines). The author, Dibakar…

Replied to Monospace by Ben Tsai (Ben Tsai) But I’m spending less time in the terminal and IDE these days. I still appreciate the feel of a monospaced font, but I want something that is optimized for prose. Unlike Ben Tsai, I have never been an engineer. But like Ben Tsai, I “appreciate the feel of a monospaced font, [and] want something that is optimized for prose.” In my case, I write drafts (and law stuff for my day job) in KDE’s Ghostwriter and prefer monospace fonts while writing in…

Quoted Timeless Brooklyn Reimagined: Minerva Development Unveils 263 Sackett in the Heart of Carroll Gardens by Bartolucci Team at Douglas Elliman (CityBiz) Located moments from Court Street, the building is surrounded by local favorites including Gersi, Nabila’s, Le French Tart, and Poppy’s Brooklyn, alongside cultural destinations like Congress Bar and Cobble Hill Cinemas. I added a significant number of Google News feeds for specific Brooklyn neighborhoods to my feed collection (future…

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). 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…

Can we complete a perfect Sunday-Friday Pook-Emu Bee link week? With this, we are 5/7 of the way there. Free discarded furniture on Love Lane in Brooklyn Heights. I took this photo on August 6, 2026. Articles 1 | New $472M electronic brain modernizes aging CH-47 Chinook helicopters (Amir Kholam for Interesting Engineering. August 11, 2026.) This reminds me of replacing the SSD and RAM in a cheap laptop I purchased on Ebay last year (I got in right before the DDR3 RAM was hit by price hikes!) 2…

We keep the Pook-Emu Bee link momentum going with more links from around the web. Key Food has many X for Y sales. In some cases you have to buy multiples for the sale price. In other cases the price applies to less than Y. With that in mind, I chuckled at having to buy five bottles of hot sauce for the $1 per bottle deal. Articles 1 | NYC first lady Rama Duwaji traveling to Syria, Lebanon — with taxpayer-funded NYPD security detail: sources (Carl Campanile for the New York Post. August 10,…

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…

Pook-Emu Bee links are back today as we start the new work-week. I took this photo on July 2, 2026. I “believe” it is in Columbia Street Waterfront District. 1 – Persona 30th Anniversary Paper Fragrances Feature Designs Announced (Orpheus Joshua for Noisy Pixel. August 9, 2026.) I have been a Persona fan since I first played FES more than 16 years ago. I have been seeing one 30-year anniversary note after another. I am respectfully asking Sega’s marketing team to calm down. The shark has been…

Liked After Nearly a Decade of Distro Hopping, I Realized It Was Never About the Distro by Bhuwan Mishra (It's FOSS) If you're picking your first Linux setup, this is the question worth asking before you pick a distro: what desktop environment does it ship, and does that match your hardware and your preference? This month marks my sixth year of running Linux exclusively on my computers, so I suppose that I am minimally qualified to offer an opinion on Bhuwan Mishra’s After Nearly a Decade of…

Pook-Emu Bee links are so real now that we’re delivering on Sundays. I took this photograph outside the Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Cathedral in Brooklyn Heights on August 6, 2026. 1 | Tracking Bees with a Stereo Camera (Al Williams for Hackaday. August 8, 2026.) A fitting entry in light of today’s New Leaf Journal review of A Taste of Honey. 2 | RV Steelhead (Tugster: A Waterblog. August 8, 2026.) Survey research of a survey vessel. 3 | Why some tech users are ditching Android for Linux…

Replied to re: The importance of owning physical (and digital) media when possible by Steve (An Almost Anonymous Blog) The second article is simply disappointing, because not only does this mean you can't own games anymore, but there are cascading impacts: it breaks the model of used video game stores (at least for modern games)... Much digital ink has been spilled on the slow decline of physical video games (including by yours truly). In a reply post by Jake at An Almost Anonymous Blog titled…

Replied to Getting serious with /e/OS - Hurdles and obstacles by Igor Ljubuncic (Dedoimedo) After lots of searches and reading, I finally managed to get an okay understanding of how App Lounge works. The app UI is opaque, and it does not tell you what the actual sources for your Android packages are. Or rather, it does, but not in a very clear, distinct way. You have Apps, Open Source and Web Apps. But what this effectively means: Play Store, F-Droid, and then, something else? I used an /e/…

I am a bit late today, but I decided to keep the Pook-Emu Bee links running with four in a row before our off-day tomorrow (Newsletter Saturday). I bought sugar and yeast at the grocery store last night. 1. Private email is fine, actually (Matthew Guay for Buttondown Blog. August 7, 2026.) I agree. But I my own solution (SimpleLogin) is not specifically listed (they note Proton Mail, which now owns Simple Login, but I have SL separate from Proton). 2. THE MORNING RANT: PepsiCo (Frito Lay) Snack…

Reposted Shueisha Makes Global Push With MANGA MILLION, A Manga Platform Available in 100 Languages by SHUEISHA Inc. (Cision PR Newswire) Shueisha Inc., one of the world's leading manga publishers, has launched MANGA MILLION, a new digital platform available for a limited time that provides readers worldwide with free access to manga with no registration required. I learned today that manga publisher Shueisha is making apppproximately 400 manga series free in 100 languages for a limited time…

Is it safe to say the daily Pook-Emu Bee links are “daily” again with three posts in a row? I did laundry yesterday evening. 1 – Video Game Accounts Can Be Inherited, Chinese Court Rules (Li Xin for Sixth Tone. August 6, 2026.) The game account inheritance news from China you have been waiting for. 2 – Switch 2 Surpasses 23 Million Units As Nintendo Claims Sales Remain “Solid” (Ollie Reynolds for Nintendo Life. August 6, 2026.) While I do not plan to contribute to Switch 2’s sales (as much as…

Quoted Zantigo (St. Paul, Minnesota) by saundersreed (Atlas Obscura) Founded in Minneapolis 7 years after Taco Bell, Zantigo (named Zapato at that time) had a similar model of rearranging the same array of a few ingredients to fill out a menu of Mexican-American dishes. After growing to 82 restaurants by 1986, Zantigo's parent company merged with it's rival's and within 2 years, all remaining Zantigo locations had been closed or converted to Taco Bells. I do not recall having heard of Zantigo…

Two Pook-Emu Bee daily links in a row? What in the world is going on here? My new (old… 2000 model) atomic G-SHOCK has arrived. 1. Mega Drive, Saturn And Dreamcast Watches Are Coming To Japan (Damien McFerran for Time Extension. July 5, 2026.) The Dreamcast watch looks cool. The other two are a bit too dark (granting the Genesis and the most well-known Saturn model were black). 2. Random: Fire Emblem’s New Game Adds Some Serious Firepower (Liam Doolan for Nintendo Life. July 5, 2026) The new…

Quoted What is a Visual Novel? (Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction) A Visual Novel (VN) is a digital narrative focused game that requires interactions where the player must be able to impact the story world or the story’s progression. The story and interactions are most commonly presented through a text box and often employ additional forms of interaction including menu choices—which often contain sets of actions that the player character can perform—or dialogue options…

My “daily” Pook-Emu Bee links have been far from “daily” of late. As a result, my link backlog has grown to an ominous size. But today we get back on track. Tomorrow? That is always TBD, but baby steps to giant strides and all. I took this photograph in the evening on April 13, 2026. I do not remember exactly where. 1. NYC subway riders push AG Letitia James to probe OMNY after extra charges, phantom fines (Haley Brown and Matthew Fischetti for the New York Post. August 3, 2026.) I have yet to…

Quoted The Sadness of Yokozuna Hoshoryu and Onosato's Poor Performances and Defeats at the Nagoya Tournament (Sumostats) Excluding withdrawals, it was the first time in 35 years—since the July 1991 Nagoya Tournament with Asahifuji (8-7) and Hokutoumi (9-6)—that multiple Yokozuna failed to reach double-digit wins and finished with 9 wins or fewer I learned from a Sumo Stats post that the 2026 Nagoya Basho marked the first grand sumo tournament since the July 1991 Nagoya Basho that multiple…

I have a PocketBook InkPad Color and PocketBook Color (both first generation). I run KOReader on both. I tried to do an OTA update of KOReader, but it failed in both cases (locked up after hitting update) and trying to launch KOReader would freeze the device. My first idea was to update manually by connecting the PocketBook to my computer. I was still unable to launch KOReader. But then I noticed that there is an “ota” directory (Applications/koreader/ota). I emptied the ota directory. The app…

Quoted Celebrating the nation's strengths, beauty for the big 2-5-0 by Letters to the Editor (Chicago Sun-Times) British Gen. Charles Cornwallis surrendered to the rebels after the Battle of Yorktown on Oct. 19, 1781. But, critically, the Treaty of Paris — granting independence to the new nation of former colonies — was not signed until Sept. 3, 1783. Almost three more months passed before the last British troops left from the port of New York City on Nov 25, 1783. I was checking my backlinks…

Quoted I Am a Heroin User. I Do Not Have a Drug Problem by Mark MacNamara (Nautilus) With genial candor, Hart presents himself as a model drug user. 'I am now entering my fifth year as a regular heroin user,' he writes. 'I do not have a drug-use problem. Never have. Each day, I meet my parental, personal, and professional responsibilities. I pay my taxes, serve as a volunteer in my community on a regular basis, and contribute to the global community as an informed and engaged citizen. I am…

Replied to Some Highly Subjective Grades for Nagoya 2026 by Josh K (tachiai.org) M7E Kotoeiho 11-4 – Led the basho after 10 days before running into trouble, having adjusted to the higher level of competition at his highest ever rank. Despite being knocked out of the race, finished strong with wins against two impressive opponents to clinch a special prize. A I read and enjoyed Josh K’s Some Highly Subjective Grades for Nagoya 2026, referring to the Nagoya Basho grand sumo tournament. He gave…

Replied to Nagoya Basho Predictions by Nicholas A. Ferrell (The Emu Café Social) In the spirit of putting my picks on record, I will pick the eight wrestlers who I think will reach double-digit wins [in the Nagoya Basho]. On July 11, I made my pre-Nagoya Basho predictions for the fourth grand sumo tournament of 2026. To be precise, I picked eight wrestlers to hit double digit wins. Now that the Nagoya Basho has been completed, let us see how I did… First, let us look at the records of the eight…

Replied to 5 tactics for hitting the Hacker News front page by Herbert Lui (herbertlui.net) A good article can hit the front page with none of these tactics. But executing all of them perfectly won’t save an article that isn’t any good. I read a post by Herbert Lui titled 5 tactics for hitting the Hacker News front page. I had six New Leaf Journal articles make Hacker News page one between April 2021 and January 2024, and can say with certainty that I never employed any of Mr. Lui’s…