November 2024 was an unusually slow month at The New Leaf Journal with just seven new articles. However, slow or not, we must still stick to our tradition – going back more than three years to August 2020 – and review the month that was at The New Leaf Journal in the penultimate month of 2024.
Autumnal November 2024 Leaves at The New Leaf Journal.
Five of my seven November articles had a connection – albeit sometimes tenuous – to elections. In A High Schoolers 2005 NYC Election Confusion, I shared a story from my high school days in 2005 about a classmate who confused the then-upcoming New York City mayoral election with a new presidential election. That story somehow segued into a 2008 anecdote about some weird remarks by our teacher at an event for graduating seniors. 27 days later – I rekindled my 2004 election nostalgia in South Dakota’s Senate Leader Succession. In this article, I wrote about how the incoming Senate Majority Leader, John Thune of South Dakota, will be the first Senate Majority Leader to have won his Senate seat by defeating a former Senate Majority Leader – a fact that immediately occurred to me as someone who had followed Thune’ close 2004 election battle against Tom Daschle. On November 4, 2024, I published Alien Voting Case in Michigan in which I used a recent incident in Michigan as a prompt to examine U.S. immigration and criminal law provisions related to alien voting. On that same day, I also shared a charming election mailer I received in NYC Board of Elections Pigeon-With-Hat Mailer. On U.S. Election Day proper, I published Three Free Desks in Brooklyn (and a Mirror), having published an article about a free desk seen in Brooklyn on Election Day in 2020 as well.
Two of my articles were wholly unrelated to elections – one was my October 2024 at The New Leaf Journal review, which mostly speaks for itself. The second (and final article of November) was Basketball Team Donation Scams in Brooklyn. A Brooklyn reporter presented a story of young men soliciting money for fake youth basketball teams as a new phenomenon. As a long-time Brooklyn resident, I addended the record and explained that there is nothing new under the Sun.
Finally, I published a new collection featuring all of our holiday history articles. This collection post will be updated as new holiday history articles are published.
Newsletter Leaf Journal
I missed one weekly newsletter in November. However, because the first Saturday in November fell on the second day of the month, we still ended up with four newsletters.
- Newsletter Leaf Journal CCVI 〜 Perennial poll leader (11/2)
- Newsletter Leaf Journal CCVII 〜 On your desk (11/9)
- Newsletter Leaf Journal CCVIII 〜 Share at Thanksgiving dinner (11/23)
- Newsletter Leaf Journal CCIX 〜 Novender (11/30)
The newsletter is a publication unto itself with original writing and links from around the web (in addition to weekly recaps), so I recommend giving it a read if you have not done so already. Our November 23 newsletter is the notable newsletter of the month because it includes a section going through all of our Thanksgiving articles going back to 2020.
The Emu Café Social
I published a couple of new posts on our short-form writing sister site, The Emu Café Social. In Al Gore’s Historic Streak Ends, I noted an update to one of my October articles based on the results of the 2024 Presidential Election. Speaking of the Election, I used a new humorous report to inspire my own anecdote in Universities Coddle Students After Election
Most Turned Leaves of November 2024
I use a WordPress plugin called Koko Analytics to count page views (Koko Analytics works entirely locally – you can read my 2021 review, although it has changed a bit while still maintaining the same basic functionality). Each month, I list our most-visited articles according to Koko Analytics. Below, you will find our 24 most-visited articles of November 2024 and of the three month period from September 1 through November 30.
My Norton Safe Search review notched its fourth consecutive first-place finish. Moreover, much like November 2023, November was an unusually strong month for the article – surpassed this year in raw numbers only by its February performance. Was Norton doing a Black Friday sale or something?
Our top-five included two notable new additions. My article on studying whether the “defense wins championships” maxim is true in the NBA checked in at fourth and, perhaps more confusingly, my article about finding a setting on my 2019 budget-level 4K to change settings for an HDMI port came in at fifth. Both of these articles were published in July and used their strong November performances to debut at 11th and 18th respectively in the three-month top-24.
Last month, I noted that two February 2021 articles, my review of a visual novel called LoveChoice and my first anime hair color article, covering Oregairu’s Iroha Isshiki, had their best-ever months in terms of page views nearly four years after going live and had made our monthly top-24. They continued their success in November, placing 16th and 18th respectively and each making their first three-month top 24 appearance of the year.
Beyond those notes, our top-24 consisted of the usual suspects in recent months and the strongest November articles are continuing to lead the way in the early stages of December – but our December ranking will have to wait until the new year.
Looking Ahead
We are already entering the second third of December, so I will skip the December preview beyond noting that I am choosing projects to prioritize for publication before the end of the year. As always, you can expect a flurry of articles to begin 2025 – including a full recap of the year that was at The New Leaf Journal.
