54 Things I Learned in 2024

Through the RSS feed for The Browser, I came to read a blog post by Tom Whitwell titled 52 things I learned in 2024. The post comes as advertised: Mr. Whitwell notes 52 things he learned in bullet-point format with a link to source for each news item (I was disappointed to learn that he did not learn anything from The New Leaf Journal – perhaps in 2025). At the bottom of the post, Mr. Whitwell linked to previous editions of his list – which go all the way back to 2024.

I have read and learned many things in 2024 – it would have been impossible for me to share 21 links in each edition of our weekly newsletter if I did not. Inspired by Mr. Whitwell, I decided to make a list of 54 things I learned in 2024, employing the same format he uses in his things I learned posts. Why 54 instead of 52? I tend to like my lists to be divisible by 3, and I could hardly follow up on Mr. Whitwell’s list of 52 things with a list of 51. Thus, I present 54 things I learned in 2024, with sources for each and relevant New Leaf Journal links when applicable.

How I Made the List

My list is a bit haphazard. I began by going through my New Leaf Journal and The Emu Café Social articles from 2024 and pulling out some facts I developed into posts (I limited myself to one thing I learned for each article). I then turned to my Zotero library of saved articles and then markdown lists saved links (I really need to get those under control). Finally, I filled the last few slots by turning to a few issues of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, which are full of fun facts since I include 21 links from around the web in each edition (talk about a good reason to follow the newsletter). There is no other rhyme or reasoning to the ordering, and I wrote the list as I came up with new facts to add – so the final composition was created on a first come, first serve basis rather than through strenuous exertions to ensure that I chose the absolute most interesting 54 things to include. In any event, I am pleased to report that I remembered the vast majority of things I learned before I reminded myself of them, and you will forget most of the things you learned if you try to diagram that thought.

Without further ado, let us list 54 things I learned in 2024.

54 Things N.A. Ferrell Learned in 2024

1. Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard posted the two greatest measured climbing performances of all time, “taking into account conditions and stage difficulty,” on the summit finish at Plateau de Beille in stage 15 of the 2024 Tour de France. (Mr. Pogačar added a few more historic performances en route to a dominant Tour win). This amused me in light of the fact that at the start of the year, I wrote an article noting that some of the best climbing performances of the mid-to-late EPO-fueled 1990s stood as the best climbing performances of all time (no longer, I suppose – take as you will without any additional commentary from me). [Karlis Ozols for Lantern Rouge]
2. I had recalled reading an April Fools joke in a 1999 video game magazine about how to acquire Yoshi in Pokémon Red and Blue. I thought it was from Nintendo Power. But in 2024, I learned that I had in fact read the joke in Expert Gamer. [Johto Times]
3. The “love umbrella” I have seen in many Japanese anime episodes is called ai ai gasa (which inspired me to research the issue further). [Everything is Bad for You]
4. The English version of True Remembrance (a visual novel) was based on the 2006 version of the same, and both were written in KiriKiri 2 / KAG 3. I knew that much. However, I did not know that the original 2003 version of True Remembrance was written in a visual novel engine called Comic Maker. [VNDB]
5. Microsoft Publisher, an application I have fond memories of, will reach its end of life in October 2026. What I learned from this news was that Publisher was still alive. [Paul for AlternativeTo]
6. The pen name of the author of A Sign of Affection, Morishita suu, is shared by two women, one being the writer/storyboarder and the other being the artist. For those not in the know, A Sign of Affection is a manga series which began in 2019 and was adapted into an anime in 2024. [kViN at Sakugablog]
7. The 2000-01 Los Angeles Lakers is the only NBA championship team of the last 51 seasons to allow more points per 100 possessions that the league average in their championship season. [Source: My Research]
8. Yahoo! Japan uses Google’s search index for its search results. This differs from Yahoo! in the United States, which relies on Bing. Yahoo! Japan is reportedly moving away from Google when its contract expires in March 2024. [Gaku Shimada and Ryohei Yasoshima for Nikkei Asia]
9. The Ailanthus Webworm Moth is native to tropical areas from southern Florida to Costa Rica, but it has spread throughout North America along with its favorite food source, the Tree of Heaven. For its part, the Tree of Heaven is an “invasive species from China.” I learned this while learning about the strange bug I rescued. [WhatsThatBug.com]
10. Halloween has the second biggest market value of any Western holiday in Japan after Christmas. (I learned many other interesting facts about Halloween in Japan as part of my research project.) [Takagi and Groot (2017)]
11. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s personal chef was once praised for his cooking by former French President François Hollande (my article on Mr. Lukashenko’s entourage had a different primary focus, however). [OCCRP]
12. Al Gore was the presidential runner-up with the most recent date of birth after six consecutive elections, which is the longest ever streak by one election cycle over DeWitt Clinton, George B. McClellan, and William Jennings Bryan. His streak was finally snapped when Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the November election, but a victory by Ms. Harris would have left Mr. Gore with the title for a record-extending seventh election cycle. [Source: My Research]
13. In 2020, Russia eliminated the requirement that naturalization applicants renounce their foreign citizenship before acquiring Russian citizenship, but the law does not recognize or sanction dual citizenship. “An exception is made for the citizens of Tajikistan, the only country that has a relevant treaty with Russia.” (I came across this fact when I was looking for the source of Russia’s dual citizenship treaty with Tajikistan, which I had been previously aware of.) With that being said, I would not recommend applying for Russian citizenship. [Peter Roudik for Global Legal Monitor]
14. Hezbollah began using pagers instead of phones to combat Israeli surveillance, per a July 2024 Reuters report. Reuters did not note where Hezbollah purchased the pagers, but there is no way that could be important. [Maya Gebeily and Laila Bassam for Reuters]
15. Google shut down AdSense accounts in Russia in August 2024. I thought that happened years ago… [Danilo_Venon for AlternativeTo]
16. The oldest known platypus is 24-years old. [Christian Thorsberg for Smithsonian Magazine]
17. As a result of a November 1, 1935 6.1 magnitude earthquake centered in Quebec, 25 buildings in Brooklyn were damaged. The most serious damage was incurred by buildings was on Sackett Street in what is now a part of the Columbia Street Waterfront District. [Susan De Vires for Brownstoner]
18. Thanks to Julius Caesar, Rome had a 15-month, 445-day year. [Martha Henriques for BBC]
19. In 2022, Japan’s NTT delivered 3.77 million telegrams for customers, down significantly from its peak of 94 million in 1963. [Casey Baseel for SoraNews24]
20. Belarusian was made the sole official language of Belarus in 1991. After taking power in 1994, President Alexander  Lukashenko elevated Russian to the status of an official language, joining Belarusian. In 1994, 40% of Belarusian students were taught in Belarusian, but in 2024 only 9% are. Belarusian has become associated with political opponents of the Lukashenko regime. For his part, Mr. Lukashenko once said “nothing great can be expressed in Belarusian … There are only two great languages in the world: Russian and English.” [Associated Press]
21. On June 20, 2024, Tajikistan President Emomail Rahmon signed a law which, among other things, banned the wearing of clothing “alien to national culture.” (Note: This law effectively formalized Tajikistan’s long-enforced official disfavor of headscarves on women and beards on men, in addition to other indicators of Islamic religiosity – note the fact Tajikistan is approximately 95% Muslim.) [Iana Freemer for Global Legal Monitor]
22. United States trade with Iran increased by 43% to more than 81 million in 2023 compared to 2022. [Adam Kredo for The Washington Free Beacon]
23. “Imports of religious literature [to Kazakhstan] without state permission (apart from one copy of any one item for personal use) are illegal and subject to prosecution…” [Felix Corley for Forum 18]
24. In 2022-23, the Department of Homeland Security instituted an immigration parole program which allowed inadmissible individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and their immediate family members to fly directly into the United States before being released on Humanitarian Parole. While I knew that, I did not know that from October 2022 to December 2023 nationals of these countries flew into the United States from airports in 77 different countries. [Todd Bensman for Center for Immigration Studies]
25. Breakdancing is (or was) an Olympic sport. [Dodai Stewart and Talya Minsberg for The New York Times]
26. “The grandmother of two Israeli hostages remaining in Gaza says she evaded capture herself on October 7 by bonding with a Hamas terrorist over the Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi — and now wants the athlete to help secure her grandsons’ freedom.” [Times of Israel]
27. YouTube TV (I am not entirely sure what it is) is very expensive – going up to $82.99 on December 12, 2024. [AlternativeTo]
28. The Army-Navy football game occurred one week after the college football 12-team playoff selection. Thus, it did not count for purposes of the college football playoff. This point bore some significance down the stretch since Army was on the periphery of the playoff race and ended up being the second highest non-power four conference champion (the highest ranked non-power four conference champion receives an automatic playoff bid). Under the previous four-team playoff system, the playoff selection could have been put off by a week in the unlikely scenario that either Army or Navy was in the playoff mix going into their annual rivalry game. [Shehan Jeyarajah for CBS Sports]
29. Only two NBA players have posted single-season usage rates over 40% (the usage stat goes back to 1977-78): Russell Westbrook in 2016-17 (41.65%) and James Harden in 2018-19 (40.47%). [Basketball Reference]
30. A record 1.1 million foreign students arrived in the United States on student visas for the 2023-224 academic year, breaking the record of 900,000 set in 2020-21. Foreign students made up 6% of all U.S. college students in 2023-24, which is also a record. [Stephen Dinan for The Washington Times]
31. Adak Island, Alaska, which is part of the Aleutian Island chain, had the latest poll-closing time in national elections. “When polls close in Adak, it’s 1 a.m. on the East Coast. [Mark Thiessen for the Associated Press]
32. The Los Angeles Lakers took away Jerry West’s season tickets in 2019 after former Lakers owner Jerry Buss had promised West that he would have season tickets for as long as Buss’s family owned the team. Jerry Buss died in 2013 and his family still owns the team. Jerry West passed away earlier this year. [Baxter Holmes for ESPN]
33. Qatar is now a participant in the Visa Waiver Program. In related news – I have a headache. [Elizabeth Jacobs for Center for Immigration Studies]
34. New York City’s top health official was secretly participating drug-fueled dance parties and sex parties in 2020-2021 while advocating for very different rules and/or recommendations for everyone else. [Aneeta Bhole and Emily Crane for the New York Post]
35. Sega developed one – and only one – PlayStation 1 game: “Mini-Moni. Shakatto Tambourine! da Pyon! It is a 2002 Samba De Amigo style rhythm game starring the Japanese pop group Mini Moni and featuring songs from Mini-Moni and another girl group named Morning Musume.” [Jack Yarwood for Time Extension]
36. While the merger of anime streaming services Crunchyroll and Funimation worked out well for me (in the short-term, at least) since I had for some time been a subscriber to both, it worked out less swimmingly for people who “purchased” digital anime from Funimation. [Ruben Schade]
37. In November 2024, Bernhard Langer set the record for oldest golfer to win a tournament on the PGA Champion’s Tour (50-and-over) at the age of 67 years and 2 months. It was the fifth time he broke the record. Langer also extended his record of winning at least one tournament on the Champion’s Tour to 18 consecutive years. Moreover, he did this after tearing his achilles tendon earlier in the year. [Doug Ferguson for the Associated Press]
38. In 2020, Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights which charges more than $60,000 per year in tuition, knowingly hired a gentleman who had been released from prison four months earlier for defrauding an elderly couple. This became public knowledge when he was arrested for soliciting and distributing pornographic images from students at Saint Ann’s and other private schools in the area. [Report to the Board of Saint Ann’s School by Debevoise & Plimpton LLP]
39. In 1981, Andy Warhol met a prominent New York City real estate figure. Warhol was confident that he could convince the real estate figure to purchase paintings of said real estate figure’s most well-known property. Warhol was so confident that he created a series of paintings without an agreement. Unfortunately for Warhol, the real estate figure did not like the paintings and declined to purchase them. Warhol’s diaries indicate that he held a grudge. I will humbly submit that the fact Warhol completed the “series of paintings” in no more than two months may be indicative of an issue with his work. Warhol’s diaries indicate that he held a grudge against that real estate developer. Warhol died in 1987. I am not sure what happened with the real estate developer, but I guarantee that he did not do anything important in November 2024. [Grace Marston for the warhol blog (archived)]
40. Markwhen: “A markdown like journal language for plainly writing logs, gantt charts, blogs, feeds, notes, journals, diaries, todos, timelines, calendars, or anything that happens over time.” (I need to try this.) [Markwhen]
41. OpenWrt, Linux-based a free and open source operating system for routers and networking applications, teamed up with Banana Pi to release the first router designed in consultation with the OpenWrt project for running OpenWrt. [Software Freedom Conservatory]
42. Outside groups spent more than $315 million on the 2024 U.S. Senate race in Montana, which saw Republican Tim Sheehy defeat three-term incumbent Senator Jon Tester. [Mattthew Brown for the Associated Press]
43. A September 2024 paper reported on the result of a study to see how cats deal with deciding whether to attempt to squeeze through small openings. Cats, like dogs, hesitated when confronted with openings that were short on the vertical dimension. However, “[u]nder the opposite condition—when Pongrácz shrank the width but kept the height comfortable—most cats never hesitated to cross through, no matter how narrow he made the opening.” Based on the study, the researchers found that cats seem to rely on trial and error instead of body awareness to try to make it through small openings. Conversely, other studies suggest that many other animals including, but not limited to, dogs, bumblebees, Asian elephants, and rat snakes rely on body awareness. [Sarah Kuta for Smithsonian Magazine]
44. Russia sent 447 goats to North Korea as part of a series of agreements. 432 goats were female and 15 were male. [EUToday]
45. Some singer named “Sabrina Carpenter,” who I only heard of because she recorded a tawdry music video in a Catholic Church in Brooklyn, is taking credit for charges being brought against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. When told of this development, Mr. Adams responded that he did not know who she was. Given all the available information, it is probably the case that Mr. Adams does not know who she is. Let it be said that I also do not know who she is outside of these two stories – and I have more than enough information already, thank you very much. [Matt Troutman and Craig McCarthy for the New York Post]
46. In 2008, Starbucks determined that the strong smell of its breakfast food was hurting coffee sales and reversed course. [Forbes]
47. “If OPT students are counted, Columbia University now has almost two-thirds of its total enrollment from abroad—a remarkable figure that makes it hard to imagine why U.S. taxpayers are massively supporting the educations of students who aren’t Americans. If OPT students are excluded, international students at Columbia still constitute 40% of its student body.” (Note: OPT stands for Optional Practical Training, which is a regulatory creation allowing college students on F-1 student visas to work under certain conditions.) [Jay P. Greene for Tablet]
48. Chinese intelligence services are using Linkedin to recruit foreign academics – not really a surprise but still interesting. [Aneta Zachova for EURACTIV Czechia]
49. Zambia set 18 as the minimum age for all marriages. [Hanibal Goltom for Global Legal Monitor]
50. Del Monte released a new breed of pineapple called the Precious Honeyglow pineapple in early 2024. While I have not encountered the Precious Honeyglow, learning about the different pineapples inspired me later in the year to try a Honeyglow pineapple when I found one on sale. I was not disappointed. Talk about delivering on the advertising. [PR Newswire]
51. FanDuel replaced GambetDC as Washington D.C.’s official sports gambling app. Before learning this, I lived in the ignorant bliss of not knowing that my nation’s capital, when left to its own devices, decides to have official sports gambling apps. [Brad Matthews for The Washington Times]
52. You can now play Sonic 2 on a TI-84 Plus CE graphing calculator. I am not too familiar with the CE line and its fancy screens. Call me when they make Sonic 2 for my TI-89 Titanium. [Brad Linder for Liliputing]
53. There’s some debate as to where to draw the line between a “ruby” and a “pink sapphire.” [International Gem Society]
54. Some communists are running around claiming that blowing into temperamental video game cartridges does not fix them. Blasphemy. Us children of the 80s and 90s know that this one simple trick will fix everything. I think this is that “disinformation” that was all the rage in the discourse of my betters for a few years there. (Please ignore the fact that I wrote about using a different method to make my recalcitrant 20-year old copy of Mario Party for the Nintendo 64 work.) [IFIXIT]

Conclusion

This wraps up my list of 54 things that I learned in 2024. I enjoyed going through my articles and notes to dig up enough to put the list together, and I could have kept going. It was an interesting enough project that I think I make it a project in 2025 to keep tabs on things I learn throughout the year so I do not have to start from scratch next December. I may even expand the idea beyond the list of links I created on the fly for 2024. If you are a fellow webmaster or publisher, I encourage you to consider publishing your own list. If you are not a publisher, perhaps my list will inspire you to reflect on some of the interesting things you learned in 2024 (I trust that a good portion of them came from my publications).