April Intro
April 2026, the month including The New Leaf Journal’s sixth birthday, is in the books. The end of the month means it is time for our month-end review. In this article, I review the month that was in The New Leaf Journal and related projects in April 2026.
April at The New Leaf Journal
I published 16 NLJ articles in April 2026, with one being our March 2026 Review. I review our other 15 April articles below.
I began April with an April Fools Justin and Justina dialogue titled Toothpaste Expiration Dates. Like many Justin and Justina dialogues, this one was inspired by a real-life story. I purchased two tubes of toothpaste at a discount store. One, which I had just started using before April, had an April 2026 expiration date. The second (which I am using now) has until July. I will note that I finished the April one by the end of April. After covering April Fools, my second article of the month was Easter-themed. I reported on an Inflatable Easter Bunny in Columbia Street Waterfront District (2026).
I published two additional articles on things seen around Brooklyn. In “Stick Library” in Brooklyn Heights, I published my reporting on a humorous twist on the “Little Free Library” seen on one of the few non-high streets of Brooklyn Heights. Next, in Weathered White Brooklyn Banana Bench, I checked in a fruit-shaped bench in Boerum Hill that I had previously documented all the way back in April 2021. As readers will discover, the elements have not been kind to it over the years.
In this April’s proverbial how-to guide post, I published Using Marginalia Search’s Backlink Search. I had featured Marginalia Search, an open source, independent, small-web focused search engine in several prior articles. Here, I looked at its backlinks search too and demonstrated how to create a search engine shortcut specifically for finding backlinks to a given domain. This is related to an article project that I had intended to publish in April, but will likely be left for May.
Uganda, Israel, and Iran in 2026 vs 1976 defies easy categorization, but in short — it is a report on the irreverent X-posting of Ugandan General and Defense Minister Muhoozi Kainerugaba and how much has changed between Uganda, Israel, and Iran in the past half-century.
April featured two NBA research articles. First, inspired by a hot take from former NBA player Jason Caffey, who was a member of three Chicago Bulls championship teams and a good 2000-01 Mikwaukee Bucks squad, I published 2000-01 Bucks vs Second Three-Peat Bulls. Next, I published Bam Adebayo’s 83 and Scoring Averages in 60+ Point Game Seasons. There were many reasons Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo’s 83-point eruption on March 10, 2026 was surprising, with one being that he ended up averaging just over 20 points per game on the season (a solid number, albeit not among the league leaders). I took every instance in which an NBA player scored at least 60 points in a regular season game and examined the 60-point player’s points per game and points per 36 minutes averages for the season in question, and then studied how Mr. Adebayo’s 2025-26 campaign matches up. I published a supplementary post on Emu Café Social titled Unique Individual Scoring Games in NBA History.
April was a month for memory posts. First, in AI Today, Calculators Back in the Day, I shared the story of how I forced a kid I was helping with middle school math back when I was in high school to do some of the work by hand instead of by calculator. I was inspired to share this story by a post which discussed the potentially deleterious effects excessive AI usage may have on creative output. Second, in My One-Game Stint as a Baseball Coach, I shared the story of how I served as first base coach for a single high school baseball game back in 2007. I was inspired to tell this story when a gentleman who runs a basketball coaching podcast and newsletter shared a link to one of my articles. While I was in the neighborhood of sharing stories from my high school days, I published Proctoring a High School Exam While in High School, wherein I shared the story of how I briefly served as an exam proctor when I was a high school student. For good measure, I included a bonus story about the one time I served as a practice exam answer bank.
On April 16, 2026, I published Spring Season 2026 at The New Leaf Journal several weeks late and with an arguably underwhelming “spring cleaning” theme. For whatever it is worth, I have been doing some real-life spring cleaning.
I celebrated The New Leaf Journal’s sixth birthday on April 27, 2026, with the publication of NLJ Sixth Birthday Project. In that article, I announced that I would publish six posts featuring my blogging/online writing “wisdom” on a schedule in May (I have kept to the schedule, but that will be a subject for my May 2026 review article). With my birthday project in mind in advance, I published two articles that I planned to cross-reference in my sixth birthday series articles. First, in Staying the Course in Writing in the LLM Moment, I encouraged my fellow writers out there to not adjust their human writing styles in an effort to avoid allegations of using chatbots. I was inspired to undertake this topic after reading a couple of blog posts defending the honor of the em-dash from online LLM discourse. Second, in Attending to Surroundings and Thoughts on Walks, I encouraged readers to enjoy walks for being walks instead of trying to optimize walks by using them for podcast listening or the like.
April at The Emu Café Social
I published 58 short posts on our short-form writing sister-site, The Emu Café Social, in April. You can see the full collection in our April archive. I am reluctant to include 58 ECS links in this article. Instead, I will discuss 12 ECS posts from April while referring readers to the rest of the posts in the full archive.
- Takopi’s Original Sin Review Reminds Me of Narcissu: I discussed Cabbage Sorter’s review of a short and cheery (it is not cherry) six-episode anime from 2024 called Takopi’s Original Sin. That was one of the last 2025 series I finished before I fell far, far behind.
- Capcom: DRM-free on GOG, DRM’d on Steam: On DRM and digital games.
- The Former Bronx Zoo Platypuses: Facts about that time the Bronx Zoo hosted egg-laying mammals.
- Touching the Gowanus Canal?: Thoughts on Brooklyn’s cleanest waterway.
- Grokipedia Thinks I Wrote About Persona Q2 (I Have Never Played Persona Q2): Some evidence that the AI alternative to Wikipedia is still a work in progress.
- April’s Pink Moon: Wherein I learn about the “pink Moon.”
- Google Verbatim Mode Custom Search Shortcut: I share a useful tip for Google Search searchers.
- Learning About Zespri RubyRed Kiwi: I am keeping my eye out for these red kiwis in New York City.
- Yellow-Capped Passover Coca Cola: Something else in the food and drink category that I would like to try…
- Development of the Anglerfish Lure: Some facts about a majestic sea creature.
- Remembering My Clamshell Landline Phone: Old phone memories.
- Banned Trees and Plants in New Jersey: In case you need to know what you are not allowed to grow in the Garden State.
This is just a small selection of April’s Emu Café Social posts. If you enjoy the sample, I would again encourage you to check the full monthly archive. I did not include any of my daily Pook-Emu Bee link collection posts in the sample, each of which contain interesting links from around the web. Speaking of links…
April at The Newsletter Leaf Journal
I mailed issued of The Newsletter Leaf Journal on all four Saturdays in April. In addition to recapping my new articles from the prior week, each newsletter comes with 21 links from around the web, weekly most-visited article stats, and other news and notes. Thus, even if you are up to date with my articles, you will still find links to good articles from around the web in old newsletters.
- Newsletter 274: “Unexpired :O” (April 4)
- Newsletter 275: “Bunny March” (April 11)
- Newsletter 276: “83 TI-89” (April 18)
- Newsletter 277: “They once called me coach” (April 25)
For those of you who do not already follow the newsletter, do note that the newsletter has an RSS feed and all issues are available in our web archive. Email sign-up is not required.
Most-visited NLJ Articles of April 2026
I use an entirely local, open source, and privacy friendly tool for tracking page visits called Koko Analytics (see my 2022 Koko Analytics review and five-year retrospective). In each month-end review, I list our 24 most-visited articles. Below, you will find our 24 most-visited articles of 2026 next to their cumulative 2026 ranking at the end of April (referring to January-April 2026).
Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search broke its own record from March for the best-ever single-month performance by an article that did not benefit from a major social sharing event, and in so doing it led our monthly article ranking for the ninth consecutive month. Its nine-month winning streak is a New Leaf Journal record:
- Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search (9 months, 08-25 through 04-26 [active])
- The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei (8 months, 09-21 through 04-22)
- An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search (5 months, 08-24 through 12-24)
- Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships (3 months, 02-25 through 04-25)
- Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage (3 months, 02-23 through 04-23)
- An Early Review of Pixelfed – Instagram Alternative (3 months, 11-20 through 01-21)
While we still have a long way to go in 2026, Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search is (as of mid-May) more than 2/3 of the way to having the second-best year for any NLJ article and by far the best for any article that did not make a Hacker News page one appearance. It was followed in April by Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine, making it the fourth consecutive month with the same top-two.
Our top-seven articles of 2026 thus far all ranked among the top 10 in April, but we did have a few notables and surprises in the mix.
How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name finished 4th for the second consecutive month and now sits in 5th place for 2026 thus far. The article, which I first published in 2021, is posting its best-ever year by a wide margin in 2026 (not a small feat considering it was our 12th most-visited article in 2023). Two other 2021 articles are also having their best years in 2026. Futaba Igarashi’s Hair Is Naturally Green? finished 11th in April and sits in 9th in 2026 while Usagi Drop: A Complicated Anime Pick finished 20th and is holding on to 15th. Both of those articles will (or in the case of Futaba, has) set new visitor records in 2026.
Finally Solving My HDMI ARC Problems, which I published back in December, broke out for a fifth-place finish in April, raising its full-year ranking to 20th. It is something of a successor to my 2023 article Broken Optical Audio Cable Door “Fix”, which checked in at 12th (14th on the year).
I published more than 100 articles on our first year online in 2020. None of my 2020 articles had made a month-end top-24 through March. Fittingly for our birthday month, April saw the first appearance of a 2020 article with Anime Recommendations of the Decade (2011-20) coming in 22nd place and moving up to 44th on the year thus far. I am not sure why it is posting its best-ever numbers in 2026, but I suppose the article is evergreen.
Finally, “Stick Library” in Brooklyn Heights sneaked into our April 2024 despite having been published in the second half of the month — largely thanks to the Newsbreak App.
Taking Leaf
We are half-way through May at publication time, so it is a bit late for a May preview. But May is going well at The New Leaf Journal, so I look forward to having plenty to share in our May 2026 Review in early June.
