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The Army-Navy Game and the College Football Playoffs

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The Army football team was on the periphery of the college football playoff mix in 2024. I noted that the Army-Navy game was played after the playoff field was finalized. This led to a research project.

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I followed college football for much of the 2000s and last followed it closely in 2010, and I dare say that the 2006 National Championship game between Texas and USC was one of the best sporting events I have watched live. Despite not closely following college football too closely anymore, I read interesting stories about it when I come across them and am tangentially aware of what is going on (see e.g., my article on Texas A&M's remarkably expensive buyout of its now-former Coach). This year was the first year of a new 12-team playoff format. I was aware that Army was having its best season in a very long time and was on the periphery of the playoff mix thanks to its being in position to win its first conference championship – Army had been an independent unaffiliated with any conference prior to this season. Army did not ultimately make the playoffs, being the second highest ranked “non-power-four conference champion” when there was only one automatic playoff bid available for the highest ranked non-power-four conference champion. However, something caught my attention about the playoff selection process: The traditional Army-Navy rivalry game was played one week after the playoff field was set and the broader array of bowl game match-ups had been decided. After Army ended up losing its rivalry game against Navy, I wondered whether the playoff and bowl game selection process contemplated the timing of the Army-Navy game, and if so, how?

I conducted a research investigation and am now able to answer the questions I asked, which I will do after briefly explaining the background for people less familiar with the torrid history of the college football postseason selection process.

The College Football Playoff Format

There was no playoff back when I followed college football. Instead, the best teams were selected for bowl games and two teams were selected to play in the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) National Championship game based solely on their “regular season” performance (the BCS format was used from 1998-2013). Things usually worked out in such a way that the selection for the National Championship game itself was not too controversial, but there were exceptions – most notably in the 2003 season when Louisiana State defeated Oklahoma in the BCS National Championship game but the Associated Press poll ranked USC number one at the end of the season, leading to the only proverbial national championship split of the old BCS era. Beginning in 2014, college football switched to a four-team playoff and beginning this season, it expanded to a 12-team playoff.

The current college football playoff format works roughly as follows. First, the champions of the “power-four conferences” – Atlantic Coast Conference (“ACC”), Big 12 (16 teams), Big Ten (which now has 18 teams), Southeastern Conference (“SEC”) – are each guaranteed spots in the 12-team playoff. There is a single guaranteed playoff bid for the highest ranked champion from the five non-power four conferences (American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Mid-American Conference (“MAC”), Mountain West Conference (“MWC”), Sun Belt Conference (“SBC”). There were no automatic playoff bids available for the Pac-12 Conference because it has been reduced to two teams after being pillaged by the now-16 team Big 12 and 18-team Big Ten (at least it still exists as a football conference, unlike the now-former Big East, which remains a basketball power but disbanded for football after the 2013 season). There is also no automatic big for the three “independents,” although we will see that one of the independent schools, Notre Dame, earned its way into the 12-team playoff by virtue of its fifth place ranking. Army had been an independent through the 2023 season before joining the AAC, following Navy, which had made the same move from independent to the AAC in 2015.

After the five guaranteed spots are accounted for, the next best seven teams in the final College Football Playoff Ranking make the field. The top-four seeds in the 12-team playoffs are given to the four highest ranked conference champions in the field and receive first-round byes. To illustrate how it worked this year, let us look at the playoff bracket:

Playoff Seed | Team | Conference | CFP Rank
1 | Oregon | Big Ten* | 1
2 | Georgia | SEC* | 2
3 | Boise State | MWC* | 9
4 | Arizona State | Big 12* | 12
5 | Texas | SEC | 3
6 | Penn State | Big Ten | 4
7 | Notre Dame | Independent | 5
8 | Ohio State | Big Ten | 6
9 | Tennessee | SEC | 7
10 | Indiana | Big Ten | 8
11 | SMU | ACC | 10
12 | Clemson | ACC* | 16

* denotes conference champion.

Before continuing, keep in mind that the playoff field was finalized on December 8, one day after the the nine conferences (excluding the two-team Pac-12) played their conference championship games.

Oregon, Georgia, Boise State, Arizona State, and Clemson secured the five guaranteed bids by winning their respective conference championships. Because Clemson was ranked outside the final top 12, it pushed out one team, in this case Alabama, which had a top-12 ranking.

But because this article is about Army’s playoff prospects, we are most interested in Boise State. Boise State won the MWC and secured an automatic playoff berth because it was the highest ranked of the five non-power-four conference champions, placing 9th in the final College Football Playoff Ranking. Army, Champion of the American Athletic Conference, was the other non-power-four conference champion ranked in the top 25, coming in at 22. There were two other non-power-four schools in the final pre-playoff top-25, UNLV and Memphis and 24th and 25th respectively, but neither won their conference championships (UNLV lost to Boise State in the MWC Championship Ggame and Memphis was in the AAC, which was won by Army). Thus, Army was the runner-up for the guaranteed non-power-four playoff bid.

(Note: There are many post-season bowl games for the non-playoff teams with winning records. The bowl games are also selected after the conference championship games are completed.)

The Army-Navy Game Question

Now we turn to my question.

Army was in the mix for an automatic playoff bid through the end of the regular season. The team had its best season in a long time, capping off an 11-1 campaign going into the playoff selection by defeating Tulane 35-14 on December 7 in the American Athletic Conference Championship Game.

With only Boise State standing between Army and a trip to the College Football Playoffs, it is not hard to imagine how Army could have made the playoffs, although it is more likely than not that their non-playoff fate was sealed before conference championship weekend. Boise State had to win its own December 7 conference championship game against UNLV to punch its playoff ticket. I suspect that even Boise State’s losing would not have allowed Army into the playoffs. Even with UNLV’s loss against Boise State, which was UNLV’s third loss of the season (one of its two regular season losses was also against Boise State), UNLV was only two spots behind Army in the final playoff ranking. While I cannot say it is impossible that Army would have received the nod if UNLV beat Boise State, the evidence suggests to me that Boise State and UNLV were effectively competing for a playoff spot in the MWC Championship Game.

However, had Army finished its regular season undefeated, things may have been different. Army’s sole loss came against Notre Dame, which ended up making the playoffs without the benefit of an automatic bid as the fifth-ranked team in the final playoff ranking, and, as of December 4, 2024, has won its first two playoff games to advance to the national semifinals. Army’s coach made his best case that Army should have received a nod based in part on the fact that its sole loss came against one of the top teams in the country, but that argument was likely undercut by the margin of the loss, Notre Dame defeated Army 49-14 on November 24. Boise State had a similarly strong opponent in its one loss, which came on September 8, 2024, against the number one overall seed going into the playoffs, undefeated Big Ten champion Oregon, by a score of 37-34 on a last-second field goal. In the world that existed, Army would have probably have had to defeat Notre Dame to plausibly out-rank the MWC Champion. Unfortunately for Army, it did not catch Notre Dame on a bad day like Northern Illinois – a team which finished the season with a record of 8-5 in the Mid-American Conference – did when it stunned Notre Dame 16-14 earlier in the season.

There are two things that set Army apart from every other team in the playoff mix, and those two things are related. Firstly, Army only played 11 regular season games going into the selection while every other team played 12. Secondly, and relatedly, Army had a regular season non-conference game between the playoff selection and the playoffs. That game of course was the traditional Army-Navy rivalry game, which was scheduled for and played on December 14, 2024, after all the conference champions, playoff selections, and bowl game arrangements had been decided. When I saw this, I was curious how the playoffs would have accommodated the Army-Navy game had Army secured a playoff bid. I became more interested in the question when, Navy, which had been briefly ranked in the top-25 and had a terrific season in its own right, defeated Army 31-13, thus handing Army its second loss of the season. This led to my question.

What would have happened had Army made the playoffs, or not to prejudge the question, been in playoff position, and then lost 31-13 to Navy one week later?

It turns out that my question about the playoff implications of the Army-Navy game had occurred to the College Football Playoff management committee well before it was known that Army would play its way into the periphery of the playoff mix. I quote from an April 24, 2024 report on the playoff committee’s planning:

The impact of future Army-Navy games was also among the firm decisions made during the CFP meetings. The annual rivalry between storied military academies will not be taken under consideration for CFP contention because it will be played after the selections have been made.

Thus, had Army secured a playoff bid on November 8, its loss to Navy would have had no effect on the playoffs. One thing I had not thought about before posing my question was how this scenario would have been handled under the former four-team playoff system:

Previously, if a CFP spot hypothetically came come down to the Army-Navy game, the selection committee could have held [off making a decision] until conclusion of the game. The protocols called for a teleconference immediately after the game to finalize any rankings or selection. In a 12-team playoff world, the time frame was too tight.

Neither Army nor Navy were ever seriously in play for one of the only four playoff positions under the 2014-2022 format. However, under that system – had there been a year when Army or Navy was in playoff position, the selection committee would have had the discretion to hold off on finalizing the playoff field for one week until after the Army-Navy game. This was no longer possible under the 12-team playoff format for logistical reasons, notwithstanding the fact that the 12-team format is what makes Army or Navy earning a playoff bid far more of a realistic, albeit still very outside, possibility.

(Note: Cincinnati made the 4-team playoff in 2021 as the undefeated champion of the American Athletic Conference, with its best win having – fittingly enough for this article – come in a non-conference game against Notre Dame, but Cincinnati was the only non power-four team to make the playoffs from 2014-2023. In the case of Army, I am not sure that it is absolutely certain they would have out-ranked Boise State (rightly or wrongly) even if they had defeated Notre Dame, much less been in the mix for a spot in a four-team playoff system.)

To the playoff committee’s credit, it considered the Army-Navy game issue and went so far as to consult with Army and Navy to see if they would be open to moving their annual rivalry game up the schedule in order to allow it to be considered for playoff purposes. However, the committee reported that Army and Navy declined to move the game:

‘They both stressed that they wanted to keep their game where it’s currently scheduled,’ Hancock said. ‘Understanding that neither team would have the benefit of an additional data point to be considered by the committee.’

This quote contains an interesting point – In a year when both Army and Navy field good teams, a win against the other could benefit the playoff case of the winner. Navy started this season 6-0 and was on the periphery of the Coach’s and AP top-25 polls before, like Army, suffering a lopsided loss against Notre Dame. Navy struggled down the stretch, losing 3 of 5 going into its rivalry game, including a 35-0 loss against the same Tulane team that Army defeated 35-14 to win the American Athletic Conference championship. But Navy was still one of Army’s stronger opponents. While the Army-Navy game would not have changed the outcome in a ranking battle between 1-loss Army and 1-loss Boise State, we can conceive of scenarios where it would have been relevant. For example, had UNLV defeated Boise State in the MWC championship game, one could imagine how the Army defeating Navy could have helped its cause in what would have been a close race for the automatic non-power five playoff nod. Moreover, had Army defeated Notre Dame, a win over a quality Navy team would have helped its case for being ranked ahead of the 1-loss Boise State squad. Of course – this cuts both ways. Had the Army-Navy been played earlier and transpired the same way it did on December 14, Army’s playoff ambitions would have ended before conference championship weekend.

While the committee settled on not counting the Army-Navy game for playoff purposes, it acknowledged that the new format combined with Army having switched from being an independent to joining the American Athletic Conference in 2024 made the complicated service academy playoff scenario far more likely than it was before:

‘It’s one thing when you do a four-team playoff and you’re not playing until the end of the month. And especially now, with that G5 slot, there’s a reasonable chance with a good season that a service academy could have a great year and be a playoff team.’

Had Army made the playoffs, it would have had a three week run of conference championship game, rivalry game against Navy, and first playoff round.

As we know, Army was a live playoff contender in the final weeks of the season, I return to a USA Today article published before the Army-Notre Dame game:

It’s important to note Army’s rivalry game against Navy won’t contribute to its CFP chances, as the matchup comes on Dec. 14, six days after the 12-team field is set. If Army wins out and makes the playoff, its spot in the 12-team would already be set, regardless of the rivalry game outcome.

Credit to the selection committee for contemplating a seemingly unlikely issue that ended up being a real issue in this first year of the new 12-team college football playoff system.

Additional Issue: Army and Navy Only Play 11 Regular Season Games Before Playoff Selection

After I initially drafted the foregoing, I came across an update to our story. On December 27, 2024, Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports reported that “[t]he NCAA Football Oversight Committee is expected to consider allowing Army and Navy to each play an extra regular-season game prior to the American Athletic Conference championship game in early December, multiple sources told CBS Sports.” This presents the issue of the Army-Navy game and the playoff selection differently than the earlier reports.

The issue as I understand it goes as follows: The NCAA has a rule limiting college football teams to 12 regular season games. Regular season games do not include conference championship games, bowl games, or playoff games. Every top-division college football team, with the exceptions of Army and Navy, play 12 regular season games before conference championship weekend and the playoff and bowl selection. Army and Navy, however, play 11 games before conference championship weekend and their 12th game one week later. (Note: This is not an issue for the third academy football team, Air Force, since it plays Army and Navy earlier in the season.)

In addition to the point that Army and Navy play one less game prior to the playoff and bowl selections, their rivalry game counts as a non-conference game, notwithstanding the fact that as of 2024, they play in the same conference, pursuant to a special arrangement. Both Army and Navy play eight conference games, leaving just three discretionary non-conference games before the playoff and bowl selection. However, in the case of Army and Navy, they only really have discretion on choosing one of those three non-conference games since they always play non-conference games against Air Force and Notre Dame. The second issue was not a problem (to the extent it is one) for Army prior to 2024 when it was an independent.

The CBS Sports article suggests that the idea of moving the Army-Navy game is still not under consideration. However, Mike Buddie, Army’s athletic director, explained that he is interested in changing the rules to allow Army and Navy to play an extra regular season game prior to conference championship weekend and the Army-Navy game. Mr. Buddie suggested that Army and Navy playing one less regular season game puts them at a disadvantage compared to the competition:

We thought, ’Hey, give us the opportunity if we want to schedule a 12th data point and be on the same footing with, for example, a Boise State this year, to have that option.

It is unclear whether Army and Navy will be permitted to play a 12th regular season game before the bowl selection, which would give them 13 regular season games in total counting their traditional rivalry game. Mr. Buddie noted that it may be too late to approve the idea for next season. But the issue bears watching for college football fans (not to mention everyone who roots for the academy teams) since, if nothing else, the 2024 season showed that the new playoff system makes it more possible for Army, Navy, or Air Force (Air Force plays in the Mountain West Conference) to qualify for the playoffs if everything breaks just right.

For whatever it is worth, I harbor some doubt that a 12th regular season game before the playoff selection would significantly change their playoff prospects. More often than not, Army and Navy would have to go undefeated to secure a playoff bid – I think that as the conferences stand today, Air Force would theoretically have a better chance of making it with one loss on account of its stronger conference (although that may change in the near future with what is left of the Pac-12 preparing to pillage the MWC). It could make a positive difference if Army and Navy scheduled a strong opponent, either on Notre Dame’s level or, more realistically for purposes of achieving an undefeated season, a notch or two below Notre Dame. But a win against a team that is not at least on the edge of the top-25 (Army’s Conference Championship win against Tulane meets this criteria, as does Navy’s early-season win against Memphis, which was 25th in the final playoff ranking) would be unlikely to move the needle.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, I tip my hat to both Army and Navy for excellent football seasons put together by players who have a great deal more academic and other non-football college activities on their plates than most of their non-academy rivals. Navy put an exclamation point on its great season by defeating the traditionally powerful Oklahoma Sooners 21-20 in the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl. Army had been slated to face off against fellow conference champion Marshall (Sun Belt champion) in the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl, but instead faced 5-7 Louisiana Tech after Marshall had to withdraw from the game due to more than two dozen of its players entering the transfer portal. Army defeated Louisiana Tech 27-6, securing the team’s first-ever 12-win season and finishing with a 12-2 record. In addition to Army’s individual record, Austen Bundy at Fansided noted that this was the first season in which Army and Navy both won at least 10 games. Combined with Air Force ending the season on a four game winning streak to finish 5-7 after a 1-7 start, things are looking up for the academy football teams even as college football changes in ways that would not seem to be conducive to the academy programs competing for postseason playoff berths.

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I review The New Leaf Journal's 81 most-visited articles of 2024, with a little help on the top-12 from our resident dialogue duo.

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Welcome to my fifth annual review of the year that was at The New Leaf Journal. I decided to handle our 2024 year-end review a little bit differently than I did for our 2020-2023 editions. My year-end reviews count down our most-visited articles of the year (see 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 review articles). In this year’s edition, I will work through our 81 most-visited articles from 81 to 1. I settled on 81 because I set a threshold for total number of views for consideration, combined with making the final list divisible by three. Our 81st-ranked article of 2024 accrued close to the same number of views as our 54th-ranked article of 2023, so I decided to make that the cut-off. Although 2022 still holds the mark for our busiest year, 2024 was our deepest year.

I wrote our 2020-2023 reviews as Justin and Justina dialogues (Justin and Justina are our resident fictional dialogue duo; you can see their collected discussions). This year, I decided to let Justin and Justina relax and only call on them to discuss our 12-most visited articles of 2024. I will handle 81-13 solo, and I will also take care of all the statistics so that Justin and Justina can focus on the content (as the kids would say). While these sorts of years-in-review are necessarily self-referential, I expect that even our most-regular readers will come across some articles they may not have seen before. Consider it worthwhile reading if you are a fan of The New Leaf Journal, looking for some fun articles to read to start 2025, or just want to get our fictional dialogue characters’ takes on the top of the list.

My photograph of Christmas lights seen at the intersection of Bergen Street and Boerum Place in Boerum Hill.

Before continuing to the ranking proper, I would like to highlight that the site has undergone some significant aesthetic improvements in 2024. I detailed most of those changes in our August 2024 review, while discussing a few additional improvements in our September 2024 review. I recommend trying our new-and-improved on-site search if you have not done so already. I also re-added our Guestbook, although we have not received any real submissions yet. To catch up on all of our articles published in 2024, you can see our full 2024 archive and our monthly review articles: January, February, March, April & May, June & July, August (see above), September (see above), October, November, and December.

(We also published our 999th and 1,000th articles in May. That is worth celebrating with fireworks.)

Rules for the Ranking

This project mostly speaks for itself – but I will set forth the ground rules for our countdown.

I am ranking the articles which received the most page visits in 2024 according to our local, privacy-friendly page-counting solution, Koko Analytics (see my review).

We are measuring the total number of visitors the articles had in 2024. There is no handicap for articles published in 2024.

While reading, I will use a few ranking terms which I define below:

Newsletter Week Top Fives: Our official newsletter (you can sign up or add our RSS feed), The Newsletter Leaf Journal, is published every Saturday. In each issue of the newsletter, I list our five most-visited articles of the Newsletter Week, which runs from Saturday to Friday. I will include Newsletter Week ranking notes when applicable.

Monthly and 3-Month Top 24s: I publish a month-in-review article every month (or at least I try to). In each of those articles, I list our 24 most-visited articles of the month in question and of the most-recent three-month period. For example, my just-published December 2024 review includes a list of the 24 most-visited articles of December 2024 and also the most visited articles of October-December 2024. Because this is a 2024 review, I will only count the 10 three-month periods which occurred entirely in 2024 (i.e., we begin with January 2024-March 2024 instead of November 2023-January 2024).

This promises to be a long article, so let us wrap up the introduction and get right into the ranking, beginning with the 81synd most-visited article of 2024…

Articles 81-61

Installing and Running Bodhi Linux on a 2007 MacBook
Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 3, 2021.

Summary: I detailed how I installed Bodhi Linux on Victor V. Gurbo’s 2007-model MacBook from college.

View Notes: Its best month came in February.

Possible Updates: There may be a “part two” to this article in 2025, but that is TBD.

Why Vintage Guitars Sound Better
Victor V. Gurbo. January 4, 2021.

Summary: Our resident professional musician and luthier, Victor V. Gurbo, made the case for the sound quality of vintage guitars (and shares photos of his vintage guitar collection).

Ranking Notes: Four of its five best months were September-December.

An Early Review of Pixelfed – Instagram Alternative
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 13, 2020.

Summary: I wrote this review of Pixelfed, an open source federated alternative to Instagram, after one month of use back in 2020. I still use Pixelfed. While Pixelfed has grown since 2020, my original review is still on point for the most part.

View Notes: Our top-ranked article of 2020, 6th in 2021, and 11th in 2022 found itself just barely sneaking into our extended ranking in 2024.

Fun Fact: This article is cited to as a source in the Russian and Finnish Wikipedia articles about Pixelfed.

Update: I still post to my Pixelfed account. You can also follow Victor.

EnBizCard Review – FOSS Digital Business Cards
Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 12, 2022.

Summary: My review of a free and open source static business card website generator, along with a discussion of how it can be used with WordPress.

View Notes: I vaguely recall it having been in the mix for a weekly ranking appearance in the spring.

Reviewing “Rashomon and Other Stories”
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 6, 2021.

Summary: My review of the Tuttle Classics Kindle collection of five English-translated short stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.

View Notes: It scored an unexpected weekly ranking appearance in Newsletter Week 22 (May 25-31) which contributed to its 20th place finish in May.

Grafting a Bird’s Head Cane Handle Onto a Wooden Umbrella
Victor V. Gurbo. June 8, 2021.

Summary: Victor V. Gurbo documented his grafting a brass bird’s head handle to an umbrella.

View Notes: After being a ranking non-entity, this article came from nowhere to secure a dominant first-place finish in Newsletter Week 37 (September 7-13). Based largely on that week alone, it secured a third-place finish in September and three-month rank finishes of 19, 19, and 20 in September, October, and November respectively.

Update: I can confirm that I have seen the umbrella in action and it is still going strong. Victor should write a more detailed guide on how to make one.

Victor's umbrella.

Our Town: “Pretty Enough For All Normal Purposes”
Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 11, 2022.

Summary: I discuss the “you’re pretty enough for all normal purposes” quote from Thornton Wilder’s classic three-act play, Our Town.

View Notes: Its top-five months were August-December, making it one of our late-risers.

Anime Review: Endo and Kobayashi Live!
Nicholas A. Ferrell. April 12, 2023.

Summary: My review of a fun little winter 2023 anime series about two people in the real world interacting with characters in a visual novel.

View Notes: I did not notice it throughout the year, but it chugged right along.

Usagi Drop: A Complicated Anime Pick
Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 19, 2021.

Summary: A quasi-review of the Usagi Drop anime, wherein I explained why I did not select it as one of my 2011-20 recommended series for general audiences despite it checking all of my criteria.

View Notes: January was its best month, but its next four best months were September-December.

Extra Note: I buried a mini review of the sweet Sweetness and Lighting anime in this article.

The Dangers in My Heart S2 Anime Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. April 28, 2024.

Summary: My review of the second season of The Dangers in the Heart anime, which aired in winter season 2024.

View Notes: It came close to making our August top-24.

Incoming: I have reason to believe this show will have a featured spot in my two 2024 anime review articles, which will be published in a few days’ time. I also have reason to believe that we will be hearing more from The Dangers in My Heart in this article.

Umineko When They Cry Red Truth Guide
Nicholas A. Ferrell. December 7, 2022.

Summary: A short leaflet post sharing a link to a “red truth guide” for the iconic Umineko: When They Cry visual novel series. I found the guide useful when I was piecing together the story in the later chapters.

View Notes: It was in position for a surprising placement in December up until the last week of the month (and year).

Surviving Megidolaon Spam in Persona 3 FES
Nicholas A. Ferrell. September 4, 2023.

Summary: I shared my recollection of an irritating, terrifying fight against a very enraged AI opponent that I had in Persona 3: FES, back in 2011.

View Notes: It posted a 13th place finish in September, most likely owed to the September release of a DLC for the new Persona 3 remake covering the parts of the original Persona 3 FES.

Extra Reading: I was inspired to share this video game spam story by my experience with a frustrating visual novel.

Comparing DuckDuckGo Lite and Qwant Lite
Nicholas A. Ferrell. September 8, 2022.

Summary: I compared the “light” versions of search engines (or more accurately, Bing front-ends) DuckDuckGo and Qwant.

View Notes: Nothing too notable.

Two cents: While I do not regularly use either, DuckDuckGo Lite is still a good choice for certain use-cases.

History of the Mario Party Gloves
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 6, 2022.

Summary: I explore the history of a 2000 settlement reached between Nintendo and the New York Attorney General over injuries allegedly sustained from playing certain poorly-conceived video games in the original Mario Party for Nintendo 64.

View Notes: It earned its first-ever monthly placement in December (only took it 25 months).

Extra Reading: I also shared my memories of the mini-games which led to the glove-settlement.

Bill’s Secret Garden - A Pokémon Generation 1 Urban Legend
Nicholas A. Ferrell. April 6, 2022.

Summary: I dated myself and related an old-time Pokémon urban legend that I was told by a classmate in April or May of 1999. It is similar, but not identical, to the more common version of the legend.

View Notes: My heart was warmed when my nostalgic Pokémon anecdote made an appearance in our August ranking at 21st.

Extra Reading: This article goes nicely with my Imagination in Pokémon Red and Blue essay.

“Uncle Susan is a Wolf” – A Graffiti Photo and Research Project
Nicholas A. Ferrell. December 29, 2021.

Summary: I shared a photograph of odd graffiti seen in Gowanus, Brooklyn, and then offered some theories about its true meaning.

View Notes: It came close to placing in March.

As seen in 2021. Uncle Susan is no longer there.

WP Super Cache Preload and Lazy Loading
Nicholas A. Ferrell. April 4, 2023.

Summary: I troubleshooted an issue I had in the interaction of my page caching set-up and trying to disable WordPress’s lazy loading.

View Notes: It was relatively consistent while never threatening to land any placements.

Searching for School Days’ Nice Boat
Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 6, 2022.

Summary: One year after I wrote a review of the School Days anime and the infamous “Nice Boat” meme it spawned, I set off on a short article journey to find the “Nice Boat” which replaced the original airing of its final episode.

View Notes: No special highlights.

Building a Big Joe Williams-Inspired Nine String Guitar
Victor V. Gurbo. March 12, 2022.

Summary: Victor V. Gurbo talks about building a Big Joe Williams-inspired 12-string guitar (photos included) while also exploring the life and legend of the musician who inspired his project.

View Notes: Its best month came in February but its 2-5 months were September-December.

Extra Reading: Victor had previously published Building an Airline Res-O-Glas Guitar Copy, which made our 2021 and 2022 rankings.

The guitar was built by Victor V. Gurbo and painted by Andy Finkle.

“Casey’s Revenge” – Grantland Rice’s 1896 Reply Poem to “Casey at Bat”
Nicholas A. Ferrell. August 26, 2021.

Summary: I re-printedCasey’s Revenge, a poem by the legendary sportswriter, Grantland Rice, which was styled as a follow-up to the iconic Casey at Bat.

View Notes: It was not far off from ranking in October, which was its best month of the year.

Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki S1 Anime Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. December 29, 2023.

Summary: I reviewed the 2021 first season of Botton-tier Character Tomozaki-kun at the end of 2023 in order to set up a review of the then-upcoming second season.

View Notes: It performed best in January-March, which coincided with the airing of the second season of the anime.

Intermission I

Victor’s umbrella article is a true one-hit wonder on the ranking. There were a few articles which made some unexpected weekly placements but missed our year-end ranking. On Barry Bonds’ IBBs in 2006 and 2007 made the Newsletter Week 2 ranking thanks to another article being shared (that story will be dealt with at the top of the ranking) and did nothing else in 2024. My Introducing Pokémon Red Novel Project post, which will tie into our 57th-ranked article below, made Newsletter Week 10. A 2021 post titled Classic Pokémon Strategy Guides from Nintendo Power and Japan very unexpectedly made Newsletter Week 13. My very first New Leaf Journal article from May 2020, Against Half-Way Yogurt Thievery, made Newsletter Week 21. There were other one-hit weekly ranking articles, but these four were true one-hit wonders.

Articles 60-40

Japanese Environment in PoL, Lutris, and Bottles
Nicholas A. Ferrell. June 16, 2022.

Summary: I explained how to set up Japanese language environments for running Windows visual novels that require them on Linux using three WINE front-ends.

View Notes: It was steady, but it did not land any placements like it did back in 2022.

Aside: This article was linked to in a GitHub issue for Bottles, and that link is the source of a decent number of its views.

LoveChoice Visual Novel Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. February 9, 2021.

Summary: A review of a three-part Chinese visual novel with endearing visuals.

View Notes: It had a good February but missed ranking in what was a strong month. It fell off after that before posting its two best-ever months in terms of page views in October and November, earning monthly rankings of 22 and 16 respectively (October was its best month in terms of visits, ranking aside). It also earned the 24th spot in our November ranking. All-in-all, this was its best performance since it came in 13th place in September 2021 against a much smaller field.

You Can’t Fix Stupid - King Baby
Nicholas A. Ferrell. April 15, 2022.

Summary: I shared “KING BABY” graffiti in Brooklyn that had some commentary added to it in the form of a “You Can’t Fix Stupid” sticker.

View Notes: It was consistently mediocre until it posted two strong months in November and December, with the latter putting it in the mix for a monthly placement.

Fun Fact: This is the first time “KING BABY” has made our year-end ranking article since 2021. That year, a different KING BABY article made our ranking in 17th.

Pokémon: Pathways to Adventure (1999) Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. April 21, 2022.

Summary: I re-acquired a Pokémon novel/strategy guide that I had read back in 1999 and gave it a thorough review.

View Notes: After having had no ranking presence for more than two years, it made two consecutive weekly ranking appearances in Newsletter Weeks 30 and 31, which coincided with its 13th and 24th place finishes in July and then August. Its strong summer helped it also sneak into the three-month ranking at the end of August in 24th position.

Coming Soon: I am almost ready to start publishing my own version of the strategy guide.

My copy of the strategy guide.

Reading Tea Leaves: The Symbolism of the Guitar and Other Instruments
Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 4, 2022.

Summary: I examined sections of a 1922 book on reading tea leaves which dealt with the symbolism of musical instruments.

View Notes: Its two best months came in January and October.

Happy Note: This article is a personal favorite of mine and it narrowly missed our smaller 2023 list, so I am happy to see it take advantage of the extra runway in 2024.

Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki – S2 Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. April 5, 2024.

Summary: The second season of Tomozaki aired in the first quarter of 2024. I wrote this review just after it finished its run.

View Notes: My second-season Tomozaki review ended up out-performing the first season review (as intended). It performed well in its eight months online to make the ranking, peaking with a 23rd place finish in October.

Extra Reading: I questioned one character's arguments in Tomozaki Anime and Big Tech Social Media.

DecSync Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 30, 2023.

Summary: I reviewed an interesting free and open source project that I was using at the time which allows for syncing calendars, contacts, and feeds without a server.

View Notes: Its best months came in January and June, with the latter resulting in a 19th place month-end finish.

Kaga no Chiyo Autumn Haiku on Unrequited Love
Nicholas A. Ferrell. December 14, 2020.

Summary: I re-printed and discussed a beautiful English-language translation of a melancholic 18th century haiku by Fukada no Chiyo.

View Notes: Save for February, its best months came in the second half of the year (with its best being December).

Historic Notes: It made the 2021 and 2022 rankings at 29th and 40th respectively before narrowly missing 2023’s top-54. It is good to see it return to our year-end party after a one-year hiatus.

Iroha Isshiki’s Hair is Brown, as Expected?
Nicholas A. Ferrell. February 12, 2021.

Summary: I examined a quote from the My Youth Romantic Comedy is Wrong, as I Expected light novel series which strongly suggested that in a world where many of the Japanese high school characters dyed their hair, the brown hair of a certain Japanese high school character was natural. This was the first of what has become a long-running series on interpreting hair color in Japanese anime and related media.

View Notes: This is my feel-good ranking story of the year because I like this article, it has some significance to the site in that it was the first of my hair color articles, and I like Iroha as a character. Iroha had done little of note since 2021, wherein she finished in 10th place that September and 24th for the year, albeit against a much shallower field than what we have in 2024. After a weak first part of the year which, according to Koko Analytics, included no visits in April, Iroha had a solid September followed by her best-ever month (in terms of visits) in October and a similarly strong November and December. Iroha placed 20th and 19th in September and October respectively and earned three-month placements at the end of November (21) and December (20).

Preview: I expect that Iroha may receive some related article help beginning in April.

Extra Reading: Within one month of publishing the Iroha article, I covered the hair color of a more minor character in the same show in Kaori Orimoto’s Hair is Blacker than I Expected. This article actually out-performed Iroha for much of 2021 and came in at 26th place that year.

Iroha says she can do even better in 2025!

Let’s Look at the Gibiru Search Engine
Nicholas A. Ferrell. July 20, 2022.

Summary: A short Leaflet review of Gibiru, an allegedly privacy-focused search tool which uses Google’s index.

View Notes: This post was a late-riser, posting its best four months in succession at the end of the year. Its September performance left it close to a monthly top-24.

Futaba Igarashi’s Hair Is Naturally Green?
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 23, 2021.

Summary: I wrote about the apparently naturally green hair of a very short young woman in an anime romantic comedy with an otherwise real-world setting.

View Notes: Futaba saw a year in two halves. Her average in the latter six months of the year was about double the first six, but she was already on pace in the first six months to squeak into our year-end article. She did not match her 2023 performance which was good enough to place 30th, but it was a third consecutive solid year for this unassuming hair color study.

Outline Guide to Persona 3 FES The Answer
Nicholas A. Ferrell. February 8, 2024.

Summary I first played The Answer chapter of Persona 3 FES all the way back in 2011. I wrote a guide for a friend who was playing the epilogue after me. I happened to still have that guide, so I decided to share its wisdom in light of the 2024 release of a Persona 3 remake.

View Notes: Like my Persona 3 spam story, which came in at 70th on this list, this post had its best month in September (23rd). While it did not peak as high as the lower-ranked Persona 3 post, it was more consistent throughout the year.

Shin Iryū’s Hair Color in A Sign of Affection
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 1, 2024.

Summary: I examined the changing hair color of a young apprentice hair-stylist in the A Sign of Affection anime. This, remarkably, was my fourth article about hair color in the show.

View Notes: Shin placed in our June ranking at 22nd and made the three-month rankings at the end of June (24) and July (22). Not too shabby for an article about the hair color of the 5th or 6th most important character in a show very much focused on the two most important characters.

The Last Stand of Constantine XI
Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 30, 2020.

Summary: Just over one month after we went live, I wrote about the last stand of the last Eastern Roman Emperor, Constantine XI in Constantinople.

View Notes: This was a rough year for an article that had achieved top-10 placements in 2020 (2), 2021 (8), 2022 (7), and 2023 (10). Constantine XI looked to be on pace to make it five year-end top-10s in a row with a strong January (its January numbers were good enough to place in any other month), but it faded after January, only securing one placement in April.

Extra Reading: I published two follow-ups in Constantine and the Last Vespers at Hagia Sophia and The Golden Eagles on Constantine XI’s Shoes. Also of potential interest is Who Was the Last Western Roman Emperor?

Using an Amiga OS-Inspired Window Theme In XFCE With XFWM4
Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 2, 2022.

Summary: I wrote about a fun AmigaOS-inspired XFWM4 window manager theme that I was using with the XFCE desktop environment.

View Notes: Its best month was January and it strongest stretch was the first quarter. 2024 is its third consecutive top-50 after finishes of 23rd and 31st in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

External Reading: One blogger found my AmigaOS XFWM4 post helpful.

A Sign of Affection Ep 7 Hair Color Notes
Nicholas A. Ferrell. February 20, 2024.

Summary: My third of five A Sign of Affection hair color ideas is the second to appear in the ranking thus far. As the title suggests, this one discussed what we learned about the hair color of key characters in the show’s seventh episode.

View Notes: This article appeared in four monthly rankings: March (21), April (20), May (9), and July (24). This translated to three 3-month ranking appearances in May (17), June (20), and July (21). It also made a single weekly top five in Newsletter Week 19 (May 4-10).

Extra Reading: Anime hair color scholars should enjoy my take on another hair color in two other 2024 shows: Hair Color in Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night and Aesthetics and Hair Color in Gimai Seikatsu.

A 2021 List of Alternative Search Engines and Search Resources
Nicholas A. Ferrell. June 13, 2021.

Summary: My now-outdated 2021 look at alternatives to the Google-Bing duopoly.

View Notes: It was in the mix for a placement in April and for a weekly top-five in May, but was otherwise fairly consistent month-to-month en route to its fourth consecutive year-end placement: 2021 (12), 2022 (29), 2023 (45).

Notes: I should probably do a new version of this outdated article, but I need a new angle to approach the subject from.

Extra Reading: Although my 2024 article Search Engine NLJ Domain Search Test is not a general search engine review, it includes some updated notes and comments about search engines I looked at in 2021 (as well as some engines not included in the 2021 review).

A Look at ProxiTok, a TikTok Frontend
Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 14, 2022.

Summary: I reviewed a free and open source privacy front-end for TikTok despite the fact that I had (and have) never used TikTok and think TikTok should be banned.

View Notes: Its best three months by a good margin were the first three months of the year – which resulted in placements in January (22) and March (24).

Question: Would a TikTok ban (fingers crossed) help my ProxiTok review?

How to Find Substack RSS Feeds and Other Notes
Nicholas A. Ferrell. June 19, 2021.

Summary: I explained how to find RSS feeds for Substack blogs/newsletters.

View Notes: It had a strong January and February before settling into a more pedestrian pace for the rest of the year. This article has fallen from it peak 2021 finish of 7th, but it continues to have its moments and, unlike some of my other tech posts from 2021 (see e.g., our 44th ranked article above), is just as relevant today as when I first published it.

Searching for the Figure Behind the Blob Dylan Tags in NYC and Florida
Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 24, 2021.

Summary: After documenting an instance of “BLOB DYLAN” graffiti seen in Bushwick, Brooklyn, I undertook an investigation, inspired by a reader email, into the shadowy figure behind the BLOB tags.

View Notes: BLOB peaked at the end of the year, notching its only monthly placement of the year in 20th place in December.

Intermission II

A few articles in the 60-40 set are part of “Collections.” The hair color articles are linked to from my new Hair Color in Japanese Anime, Manga, and Games collection post. Meanwhile, the BLOB DYLAN survey is included with other articles about the BLOB in BLOB DYLAN Articles. You can find my growing list of collections (I plan to prioritize adding more in 2025) on our New Leaf Journal Collections page.

Articles 39-25

Familiar song in Angel Next Door anime
Nicholas A. Ferrell. February 6, 2023.

Summary: While watching the simulcast of The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten in 2023, I noted to myself that its ending song sounded familiar. That led to an investigation.

View Notes: I figured that this article, which finished 40th in 2023 when it had the benefit of the anime it was attached to airing, would have faded in 2024. Against my expectations, it improved in 2024, notching two monthly placements in July (21) and August (23) and coming close to a weekly top-five in that stretch.

Peekier Search Engine Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. February 26, 2022.

Summary: A review of a Bing-based search tool called Peekier. While this was relevant when I wrote it, Peekier was discontinued in early 2023.

View Notes: Peekier finished 3rd overall in 2023 despite having been taken offline at the beginning of the year. It continued its strong performance in early 2024, coming in 15th in January and 21st in February and finishing 24th in the first 2024 three-month ranking at the end of March. While reality finally caught up to it after the first quarter of 2024, it performed well enough for the rest of the year to finish much higher than an article about a dead search tool probably should have.

Peekier is gone, but not forgotten.

Hair Color in The Apothecary Diaries Anime
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 15, 2023.

Summary: A study of hair color in the first season of The Apothecary Diaries anime, which ran from fall 2023 through winter 2024, while the first season was in progress.

View Notes: I wrote this article when The Apothecary Diaries began in 2023, but fortunately for the article, the show aired through the first quarter of 2024. Its best months came early in the year, finishing 19th in February, 16th in March, and 23rd in April, which translated to three-month rankings of 23rd in March and 18th in April.

Possible Revival: The second season of Apothecary Diaries begins in a few days, so I would not be surprised to see this article show some signs of life in the first quarter of the new year. (Note that I ended up being less-than-enthralled by the first season.)

Review of the Teracube 2e Smartphone
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 19, 2021.

Summary: An early review of my Murena Teracube 2e smartphone written two months after I started using it in 2021.

View Notes: Its best month came in January and it had a solid, albeit still non-ranking stretch, from June through September.

Update: The Teracube 2e is outdated (it was not exactly top-line hardware in 2021 either), but I still use my phone as a Syncthing node and occasional MikroTik router remote.

Kaori After Story – Visual Novel Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. December 31, 2022.

Summary: Kaori After Story is a spin-off sequel to a longer visual novel by the same developer called ACE Academy. Having reviewed ACE Academy in detail, I then tackled Kaori After Story.

View Notes: This was (to me, at least) one of the biggest surprises of 2024. After a slow start to the year, it posted three monthly placements in June (21), August (14), September (22) before turning in its best performance by a wide margin in terms of views in December, which translated into finishing 11th on the month. Its December finish was powered by a strong run from December 28 through the 31st, which included some of the best days of any article in 2024 and helped it pick up several positions in the final days of the year. It placed in the three-month rankings at the end of August (21), September (22), October (21), and December (22). It also became the first of many many visual novel articles to achieve a weekly ranking placement, coming in third place in Newsletter Week 32 (August 3-9).

Extra Reading: Kaori After Story depends on ACE Academy, so if anything it is the extra reading after my ACE Academy – Visual Novel Review article.

Using Web Archives To Get Around CAPTCHAs
Nicholas A. Ferrell. August 12, 2022.

Summary: A guide to using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to circumvent annoying CAPTCHAs (I dare say this is one of my most useful guides).

View Notes: It was one of the more consistent articles of the year, peaking in September where it came close to making the monthly ranking.

Fixing Refresh Rate Issue on 4K TV Monitor
Nicholas A. Ferrell. July 26, 2024.

Summary: I described how I fixed an issue where, when using my TV as a monitor for a mini PC with the KDE Plasma desktop, I was stuck at a refresh rate of 30 Hz at 4K resolution despite my TV’s specs indicating that I should be able to set up 60 Hz at 4K.

View Notes: This is the most recently published article in the top-81, making our list despite only being online for five full months. It is here almost entirely because of November and December, wherein it finished 5th and 2nd respectively. Its November-December run translated into three-month rankings of 18th at the end of November and 3rd at the end of December. It made the weekly top five in five out of the last six weeks of the year and scored consecutive first-place finishes in Newsletter Weeks 50 and 51.

Extra Reading: Help! I Think My TV Is Watching Me.

Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships
Nicholas A. Ferrell. July 9, 2024.

Summary: I examined the relative offensive and defensive ratings of the last 51 NBA champions to determine whether the old saying defense wins championships is true of the NBA teams which actually won championships.

View Notes: One spot ahead of the most recently-published article in our top 81 is our second most recently-published ranking post, this one also from July 2024. Despite this NBA statistics survey having nothing at all in common with my TV monitor troubleshooting, it followed an eerily similar ranking trajectory. It began doing well a bit earlier, making three monthly rankings instead of two: October (12), November (4), and December (4), which translated into three-month placements of 11th in November and 6th in December. It made four Newsletter Week rankings in weeks 46-47 and 48-49, earning a first-place finish in Week 49.

Extra Reading: My final article of 2024, Best Record vs Best Net Rating in 51 NBA Seasons, is a follow-up.

Persona 4 Golden Digital Artbook Review (Steam)
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 15, 2020.

Summary: A review of the Persona 4 Golden digital deluxe edition artbook, which comes for a small additional fee with the purchases of Persona 4 Golden on Steam (note: the “book” is a PDF).

View Notes: This is one of our strongest all-time articles, having made every year-end ranking this far: 2020 (6), 2021 (4), 2022 (14), 2023 (18). It ranked in February (12th) and March (21st), making three-month rankings in March (21) and April (16). It also performed well in January and August.

Aside: This had been our second most-visited 2020 article in 2021-2023. This year, it finally takes the crown for most-visited article published in 2020.

Extra Reading: My Review of the Original Persona 4 Artbook is more interesting (in my humble opinion).

My Logitech Washable Wired Keyboard K310
Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 20, 2024.

Summary: I reviewed by Logitech K310 keyboard, which I had been using for more than a decade (I retired it a couple of months later).

View Notes: It performed well out of the gate and ranked in August (11), September (12), October (17), and November (14), which translated to four three-month placements in September (16), October (12), November (13), and December (16). It also made a single newsletter week ranking appearance in Week 36 (August 31-September 6).

Update: I still use it as a backup keyboard. It is fine save for its loose E-key.

Review of /e/ – An Android Alternative For Mobile Phones
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 21, 2021.

Summary: My early review of /e/ OS as used on my Teracube 2e phone. /e/ OS is a fork of LineageOS, which in turn is a fork of Android. This is our most-read article of 2022 and of all time thanks to Hacker News.

View Notes: It placed in four months: January (18), February (23), June (20), and July (19), also netting three-month placements in June (21) and July (20).

Update: Having noted in my comments on our 37th-ranked article that my Teracube 2e is still in semi-active service, I add here that it is still running /e/ OS (and receiving updates).

Performing Site-Specific Searches With DuckDuckGo
Nicholas A. Ferrell. August 8, 2021.

Summary: I explained how to conduct site-specific searches in DuckDuckGo, using Project Gutenberg and some random online magazine called The New Leaf Journal as examples.

View Notes: Its best month by a wide margin came in January (19th position), but it also placed in February (20), April (21), and September (19). It placed in the three month rankings at the ends of March and April (22), September (24), and October (23). It oddly made its first Newsletter Week ranking since 2021, coming in fifth place in Newsletter Week 33 (August 10-16).

Understanding Hair Color in the Kimi ni Todoke Anime Series
Nicholas A. Ferrell. August 19, 2021.

Summary: A 2021 study of hair color in the first two seasons of Kimi ni Todoke, which aired from 2009-11. Note I wrote this before it was known that Kimi ni Todoke would receive a third season, which aired in August 2024, more than 13 years after the second season.

View Notes: This article had performed respectably in 2021 and 2022, placing in both year-end rankings at 43rd and 42nd respectively despite being about hair color in an anime that had concluded more than a decade earlier. It saw an unexpected spike in January and February of 2023 thanks to the show being added to Netflix and Netflix’s announcing that there would be a third season, and it finished 23rd in last year’s final ranking. The third season was made available in August, which likely spurred this article to the top finish in Newsletter Week 32 (August 3-9) and a third-place finish overall in August. It also appeared in the Newsletter Week 33 ranking and achieved monthly placements in April (23), June (18), and July (12), which translated into three-month placements in July (18), August (8), September (10), and October (16). It did not quite match its 2023 performance, but it was close enough to only drop five positions in the 2024 ranking.

The Story of Billy Possum, President Hoover’s Pet Opossum
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 30, 2021.

Summary: I learned about former President Herbert Hoover’s pet opossum while putting together research on the pet raccoon of Hoover’s White House predecessor, Calvin Coolidge. Once I learned that Hoover had an opossum, there was only one thing left for me to do.

View Notes: My Hoover article entered 2024 with a head of steam after a very surprising third-place finish in December 2023, which helped it shoot up to 15th on last year’s ranking. Its best month in terms of visits was January, which yielded an 18th place finish, and it also placed in February (19), March (17), August (20), and November (15). It had spots in the three-month rankings at the end of March (19) and April (23).

Fun Fact: This article is cited to in the English Wikipedia article on Billy Possum. It was the second article to appear in an English Wikipedia footnote (see the first).

Extra Reading: Meet Billy's predecessor in When President Coolidge Spared a Raccoon From Thanksgiving Dinner.

A photograph of President Hoover's pet opossum, Billy Possum. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [LC-DIG-npcc-17482].

Installing Non-Listed Programs in PlayOnLinux
Nicholas A. Ferrell. July 8, 2023.

Summary: My good friend and colleague Victor V. Gurbo was having trouble navigating PlayOnLinux on his Bodhi Linux-powered ancient MacBook (see our 81st-ranked article). That inspired me to write a guide to using PlayOnLinux (and perhaps by extension, its PlayOnMac sibling).

View Notes: Another steady-but-unspectacular performer, it achieved five month-end placements in April (16), August (22), September (21), October (13), and November (19). It was in our three-month ranking at the ends of June (23), August (22), September (21), October (18), November (17), and December (19). It made a single weekly top-five in Newsletter Week 42 (October 12-18), coming in third.

Aside: I am surprised to see this here because I think when I saw the “PlayOnLinux” article on Koko Analytics, I usually thought of the article that came in 60th.

The Dangers in My Heart S1 Anime Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. December 28, 2023.

Summary: The first season of The Dangers in My Heart aired in spring season 2023. I had no plans to review the first season, which missed my year-end top six shows for 2023, until I saw that the second season was airing in winter 2024. I decided to review the first season at the end of 2023 to set up a review of the second season.

View Notes: This review had its best months when the second season of The Dangers in My Heart was airing, beginning the year with four consecutive monthly placements in January (24), February (17), March (10), and April (17). It declined after that and did not make any additional monthly placements. It ended March (18), April (14), and May (15) in our three-month ranking. Finally, it earned a singly weekly placement with a fifth place finish in Newsletter Week 14 (March 30-April 5).

Notes: While I had mixed feelings about the first season of Dangers, the second season is excellent, so I suppose I have to affirmatively recommend the first.

Intermission III

Our 33rd- and 34th-ranked articles placed impressively high in the final ranking when we consider that they were both published in the second half of the year. It can be hard to predict which articles published late in the year will go on to be successful – for example our bronze medal finisher in 2024 (I will not spoil it here, but you will find it later in the article) was certainly an unexpected success story. We did have a few post-July articles to appear in monthly rankings. Click Switch: FOSS Android Game Review made the September ranking not long after it was published, although that was most likely attributable to its being shared by the developer of the game. Halloween in Japan: Through English Sources, which required the most work of my 2024 articles, fittingly made the October ranking despite only being online for two weeks. While it did not carry that success into November and December, I hold out some hope that it will do well in the long run. Finally, 54 Things I Learned in 2024 made our very competitive December ranking despite only being online for two weeks in 2024. I am not sure whether this one will continue to do well, but I plan to build on the things I learned project in 2025. While I am sure other late 2024 articles will show life in 2025, I will make an easy prediction that Days With My Stepsister: Anime Review (September 27) will make next year’s ranking based on the general trend in my recent anime reviews.

Articles 24-13

Reviewing FrogFind: A Search Engine For Vintage Computers
Nicholas A. Ferrell. July 24, 2022.

Summary: FrogFind presents DuckDuckGo search results in a very lightweight, minimalist way that works with stripped down or outdated web browsers on under-powered hardware. I was looking at many different search engines and front-ends of the time, and this looked like a fun review topic.

View Notes: FrogFind had a break-out month in December, posting its most views by a wide margin and making our monthly ranking in 10th. It had previously notched four monthly placements in April (14), June (15), September (24), and November (20). It earned three-month placements at the ends of May (20), June (16), July (24), August (23), October (24), November (23), and December (14). It posted a single weekly placement, finishing runner-up in Newsletter Week 18 (April 27-May 3).

Thoughts: This could be an article to watch for 2024. If a review of Peekier, a similarly niche (albeit different niche) project, could come in third in 2023 despite being offline for more than 90% of the year, I think my FrogFind review has room to grow in 2025.

Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage
Nicholas A. Ferrell. February 3, 2023.

Summary: I began playing Fire Emblem Engage very shortly after it was released in January 2023. I discovered what I thought was a clever trick for dealing with a difficult stage while being under-leveled.

View Notes: This article finished runner-up in the 2023 ranking. It unsurprisingly dropped off as we moved further away from the release of Fire Emblem Engage, but it still had a very good year, all things considered. Its best month in terms of views was January, and it notched five monthly placements in January (13), February (15), March (19), May (22), and then, surprisingly after a long monthly ranking break, December (19). It also made two three-month rankings at the ends of March (15) and April (19).

Personal Notes: (Whispers) I still need to finish Engage.

Extra Reading: Fire Emblem fans may enjoy My Glass Cannon is Tankier than Expected: Lysithea-Fire Emblem Story.

The Nice Boat: A Look Back at the School Days Anime
Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 6, 2021.

Summary: School Days is an anime adaptation of an eroge visual novel of the same name which gained some degree of fame or infamy for being an utterly ridiculous show and having what was supposed to be the initial airing of its final episode replaced by documentary footage which featured a very nice boat. I reviewed the anime and the memes it gave rise to. (My article about the “nice boat” came in at 64th place on this ranking).

View Notes: School Days came in at 21st and 24th in 2021 and 2022 respectively before having something of a breakout year in 2023, earning a much sought after (in New Leaf Journal circles) single-digit ranking of 9th. 2024 saw it return to something more closely resembling its 2022 form. It made half of the monthly rankings, placing in January (16), May (24), June (20), August (17), September (11), and October (15). It made just over half of our three-month rankings, placing in July (23), August (18), September (15), October (14), November (15), and December (24). While the School Days anime is not known for steady consistency, its 2024 performance recalled its 2021 and 2022 equilibrium.

Extra Reading: I reference a friend of mine in the article who had a positive view of School Days. While I was not persuaded that he was correct about the show as a whole, he did convince me that it has one well-written character.

Ghostwriter Markdown Editor Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 7, 2021.

Summary: I reviewed my go-to markdown editor on Linux. Coincidentally, I am drafting this entire article in Ghostwriter, so it suffices to say that it still earns my highest recommendation.

View Notes: It had no major highs or lows, keeping a good pace en route to its third straight strong year after finishing 17th and 20th in 2022 and 2023 respectively. It earned monthly placements in March (18), April (19), May (21), June (17), July (20), October (21), November (21), and December (18). It featured in the three-month rankings at the end of April (17), May (18), June (17), July (19), August (21), October (21), November (22), and December (17).

Hair Color in Raven of the Inner Palace
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 15, 2023.

Summary: I was reviewing hair color in The Apothecary Diaries, which was then an ongoing show, in November 2023 (that review ranked 38th on this list). Writing that reminded me of hair color in another anime court drama called Raven of the Inner Palace, which aired in 2022 and earned a fourth-place ranking in my 2022 anime review. Thus, I published not one but two articles about anime hair color on November 15, 2023.

View Notes: When I published this article and my Apothecary Diaries reviews on the same day in November 2023, I expected The Apothecary Diaries article to perform better on account of the fact that it was (and once again, is) an ongoing show and, insofar as I can tell, more popular than Raven of the Inner Palace. Imagine my surprise then when Raven posted big visitor numbers in January to make our Newsletter Week 4 (January 20-26) in third place. Raven flew (pun intended) into 10th place in January, which stands as our second busiest month on record, and what was at the time the best month for an anime hair color article in terms of visits. While it did not again reach the heights of January, it continued to perform well throughout the year, placing in our monthly rankings in February (24), March (22), May (19), June (11), July (19), September (20), and December (15). December was its second best month in raw views thanks to a surprising second weekly top-five appearance in the penultimate Newsletter week of 2024, number 51. Raven appeared in several three-month rankings, checking in for the periods ending in March (19), April (24), May (22), June (19), July (16), August (20), and September (23).

Food for thought: I doubt Raven will get a second season, but if it did…

How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 11, 2021.

Summary: A charming 19th century poem on how the forget-me-not flower earned its name led me on a search to learn the true story behind the name of a hard-to-forget flower.

View Notes: While this article has nothing in common in terms of content with my School Days review, it has followed a similar popularity trajectory over the years. It placed in 22nd and 20th in 2021 and 2022 respectively before having a mini-breakout last year on its way to finishing 12th. It did not quite match its 2023 showing in 2024, although it came closer to doing so than School Days. It earned monthly placements in January (23), March (13), April (8), May (12), June (12), July (19), and November (24). It performed best in the spring in 2022 and 2023 – so that does seem to be the trend for it. It placed in the three-month ranking at the ends of March (20), April (13), May (11), June (10), July (12), and August (16). It also made two Newsletter Week rankings in Weeks 12 and 18, finishing fourth on both occasions.

Extra Reading: This goes well with my springtide reader, New Leaf Spring Content, New and Old.

Dragonair Safari in Pokémon Yellow
Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 5, 2023.

Summary: I told the story of how I once battled very long odds to capture a Dragonair in the Safari Zone in Pokémon Yellow and then worked through the math behind those odds.

View Notes: I did not expect my Dragonair article to do much of anything, much less become one of our best-performing articles one year after I published it. It showed its first signs of popularity in May when it posted a 14th place monthly finish. Dragonair would not be seen again in the monthly ranking until September, when it landed in 15th. But it made its move up the charts in the next three months, posting ranks of 7th, 9th, and 8th in October, November, and December respectively. Its strong finish can be seen in its three-month ranks, which it made at the ends of September (20), October (11), November (9), and December (7). Its December performance was particularly strong and responsible for its jumping up several spots in the final ranking, as indicated by its only two weekly ranking placements in Newsletter Weeks 49 and 50 (covering November 30-December 13).

Looking Ahead: I collected research for a follow-up article on additional things I learned about Dragonair’s programming in Pokémon Yellow. Of course, I did that over the summer and still have not finished the article. Coming soon in 2025.

Extra Reading: I told another Pokémon hunt story in Searching for Caterpie in Viridian Forest.

PROOF.

A Sign of Affection – Anime Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 28, 2024.

Summary: The A Sign of Affection anime aired in the winter 2024 season. While it was airing, I wrote five articles about the myriad hair colors of the show’s characters. When the show was done, there was only one thing left for me to do.

View Notes: I had high hopes for this article performing well after seeing how my articles about hair color in the show were doing. Not only did its performance leave me satisfied, but the review ended up out-performing the hair color articles in the second half of the year (which is what was supposed to happen, but as we will see later in the ranking, things do not always go as planned). I have described some articles as being consistent. Try this article’s monthly rankings on for size: June (9), July (6), August (7), September (10), October (8), November (8), December (8). Its three-month rankings tell the same story: June (14), July (8), August (7), September (7), October (7), November (7), December (9). Its performance has actually changed – its best two months in terms of views were December followed by November, notwithstanding its drop in the three-month ranking. While it was more steady than anything, it landed in seven Newsletter Week top fives in Newsletter Weeks 26, 34, 40-41, 44-45, and 47.

Extra Reading: I published Additional Thoughts on A Sign of Affection.

The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten - Anime Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 30, 2023.

Summary: The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten aired in winter 2023. I wrote an article while it was airing (see our 40th place article) which did unexpectedly well, so I was inspired to write a full review of the show after finishing.

View Notes: This is our top-ranked anime review of 2024 (it also held the honor in 2023), but it was out-performed by my A Sign of Affection review (in 17th position, above) for much of the year. Where my A Sign of Affection review as a model of consistency, Angel Next Door followed a different path. It ended 2023 with a first-place finish in our final weekly ranking and carried the momentum into 2024. Its January performance was one of the best months of the year, which it carried into a third place finish. It also placed in four of our first five weekly rankings (Newsletter Weeks 1-3 and 5) and it would have likely had first place finishes in the first two weeks but for the good readers of Hacker News. Things looked bright, but after its anime review record-setting January, it reverted to its mid-2023 form. It placed in monthly rankings in February (18), April (19), May (16), June (23), July (11), August (19), October (24), and November (22). It earned three-month placements at the ends of March (12), April (20), May (19), June (18), July (14), August (15), September (18), October (20), and December (23). It was still clearly our second-best performing anime review after A Sign of Affection found its footing in June, but it dropped off significantly after January. Some of it likely has to do with our moving further away from the airing of the first season. There may also be another article which played a role, but we will reserve that discussion for a while longer.

Prediction: While my A Sign of Affection review has had the better of my Angel Next Door review for eight months, I think that Angel Next Doorwill flip the script down the line whenever the promised second season of Angel Next Door receives an air-date.

The Last Nintendo Wii Games
Nicholas A. Ferrell. August 1, 2023.

Summary: The Nintendo Wii had a long life-span. An article made me interested in figuring out the identity of the last-released Wii game. The answer turns out to be a a matter of perspective.

View Notes: This article made the first 10 monthly rankings before missing the last two: January (17), February (13), March (12), April (6), May (17), June (7), July (7), August (16), September (17), and October (10). While it missed two monthly rankings, it went 10/10 in 2024-only three-month rankings: March (14), April (11), May (12), June (9), July (9), August (9), September (12), October (13), November (14), December (21). It notched four Newsletter Week placements in Weeks 16, 25-26, and 29, with 25 yielding its highlight of the year in a first-place finish for the week of June 15-21.

Height differences in anime romances
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 22, 2023.

Summary: I read about an upcoming anime in March 2023 which made me think about height differences in romance anime. One thing led to another and eventually I was writing about shoujou heroine tropes.

View Notes: I did not write this article with the expectation that it would be popular, but it surprised me in 2023 when it scored a dominant first-place finish in the July ranking and carried the momentum to an 8th place finish on the year. Its views were fueled by the fact that the anime which inspired me to write the post, My Tiny Senpai, aired in summer 2023 (I did not end up watching the show). While this article did not reach its 2023 heights, it performed far better in 2024 than I would have predicted. Congratulations to the first article thus far in our ranking to make every month-end top-24: January (14), February (16), March (15), April (15), May (19), June (13), July (16), August (9), September (8), October (9), November (12), December (14). It logically follows that it also made the 10 three-month rankings: March (16), April (15) May (16), June (15), July (13), August (13), September (9), October (9), November (10), and December (11). It added Newsletter Week rankings in weeks 34 and 36 for good measure (pun unintended).

Heights in “The Dangers in My Heart” Anime
Nicholas A. Ferrell. April 2, 2023.

Summary: The Dangers in My Heart, which is the subject of articles which appeared in 72nd and 25th place on this humble ranking, had just started airing in the spring 2023 anime season. I had recently published an unrelated article about height differences in anime romances (see above) when I watched the first episode of this new show. I noticed a rather dramatic height difference between the boy and girl at the heart of the show. I decided a short-form Leaflet post was in order.

View Notes: This Leaflet post (it is not a full article) had a big 2023 thanks to the popularity of The Dangers in My Heart (Note: I had no idea that the underlying manga series was apparently popular or that the anime adaptation would be a big thing when I wrote this post). It nearly snagged the top ranking in June 2023 and despite losing steam as the year wore on, it finished a more-than-respectable 11th in the final 2023 ranking. Its trajectory changed dramatically in 2024 when in January it blew away its excellent June from 2023 and would have had the top-article-of-the-month crown in narrowly missed in June 2023 if not for Hacker News (we will discuss that at the end of this ranking). It placed in the months of January (2), February (8), March (4), and April (15). That was it. It had one of the best months of any article in January, very strong performances in February and March, a decent enough April, and then it disappeared from our ranking. To be sure, it still had some decent months, which it needed in order to rank as high as it has, but it would have ranked 18th based on its January-April numbers alone. Its three-month placements tell the story even more dramatically: March (3), April (7), May (10) – and that is all. During its great run, which coincided entirely with the airing of the second season of The Dangers in My Heart, it made nine Newsletter Week top Fives in weeks 2-6, 8, 12-14, and it took the first-place ranking in Newsletter Week 4 after having very narrowly missed a top-weekly finish on multiple occasions in 2023.

Prediction: I expect that there will be a third season of The Dangers in My Heart within the next few years. If so, this Leaflet could rise again, but I would prefer to see more of my Dangers visitors go to my actual reviews of the two anime seasons.

Intermission IV: Enter Justin and Justina

(Note: The events of the following dialogue take place on New Year’s Day.)

Nick exits stage right to enjoy his New Year festivities. Maybe he will go for a walk. Maybe he will configure his new OpenWrt-powered wireless access point. Or maybe he still has to format this article even though he is yielding the floor to Justin and Justina. Justin and Justina are sitting in The Emu Café enjoying New Years, just like they did in 2021-2023.

“So how many idiots do you think went to Times Square to watch the disco ball drop in the rain?” asked Justin.

“I’m OK with the ball drop,” replied Justina, “but not with the rain.”

“I know that well.”

“But do you know what I’m not OK with?” asked Justina.

“What’s that?” asked Justin.

“The bird. Why is it here every New Year?”

Justina was referring to The Emu, the Proprietor of The Emu Café. To be sure, she has always raised questions about The Emu. Her questions go unanswered. The Emu placed a coffee and pancakes in front of Justina.

“Wow, she’s as disagreeable as ever, is she not?”

The Emu nodded.

“You two are communicating again,” grumbled Justina.

Justin dug into his soba soup. “I can’t believe you didn’t get the soba this year.”

“I wanted pancakes!” yelled an irritated Justina, willfully.

“You could have at least gone for the buckwheat pancakes,” chided Justin.

The Emu stood and watched.

“Do you have something to say, bird?” asked Justina.

The Emu had nothing to say.

“So what do you think of the ranking so far?” Justin asked Justina.

“Well, I’m glad I don’t have to listen to you blubber about that Constantine XI guy like you did the last four times we did this. He’s off the board! You were tearing up again though.”

“He’s just such a hero,” Justin hands The Emu a tissue.

“The bird too!” yelled Justina. “But I’m concerned.”

“Why is that, Justina?” Justin asked his friend, who has a tendency to tell, rather than show, what she is feeling.

“First it was anime hair color in 2021. Then height last year. The problem is getting worse this year. How many hair color and height articles have there been already?”

“Let’s see” said Justin as he began going through the list, ignoring the fact that having to go back and count to find the answer highlighted Justina’s concerns. “Seven hair color and two height articles” said a voice that was neither Justin or Justina.

“Wow, thanks Emu! That’s right.” said Justin with genuine gratitude.

“I’m going to ignore the TALKING BIRD and give you a warning.”

“I’m ready,” replied Justin.

“If there’s another height or hair color article, I quit.”

“Got it. Anything else before we start?”

“No, you and the BIRD can do whatever while I enjoy my pancakes.”

Articles 12-4

The Emu handed Justin an envelope, which he opened and reviewed before beginning to read off the 12 most-visited New Leaf Journal articles of 2024.

12. Itsuomi’s Hair Color in A Sign of Affection

Itsuomi’s Hair Color in A Sign of Affection
Nicholas A. Ferrell. February 5, 2024.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

1-Mo | N/A | 1 | 2 | 13 | 8 | 14

3-Mo

5

2

7

11

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1-Mo | 15 | 15 | X | X | X | X
3-Mo | 11 | 14 | 17 | X | X | X

Newsletter Week Placements: 6 appearances (Weeks 7-11, 13) and 3 top placements (Weeks 7-9).

Justina stared blankly at Justin upon learning that the 12th-ranked article of 2024 is the eighth hair color article to be revealed in the year-end ranking right now.

“You’re just staring. You need to tell us how you feel about this.”

“I’m not happy but I’ll finish my pancakes,” Justina said, apparently going back on her threat to “quit” if another hair color article appeared in the ranking.

“So get this. There’s this multi-lingual dreamboat in an anime about a cute deaf girl falling in love. He has silver hair, right? But then we see a family picture in his apartment. He has black hair in that picture. What do you think we just learned, Justina?”

“That he dyes his hair?”

“Bingo! Nick really did some thorough research here.”

“Are you kidding me? That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

Justina sighed.

“Do you want me to set you up with him?” Justin showed Justina a screen capture of the dreamy 2D anime boy, Itsuomi Nagi.

“He’s not bad looking but not my type,” replied Justina as she looked at the picture while cutting a piece from her pancakes.

“I follow you. Not everyone is ready to go out with a 2D person. Society has a long way to go.”

The Emu stared blankly at Justin.

“What? Was it something I said?” asked Justin.

“I don’t like having to agree with The Bird, but sure – the whole 2D thing is an additional issue,” clarified an exasperated Justina.

(Emu's note: There is one additional article about Itsuomi's hair color which did not make our year-end list.)

11. Installing GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel 6a

Installing GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel 6a
Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 15, 2023.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

1-Mo | 8 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 13 | 6
3-Mo | 9 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 8

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1-Mo | 10 | 12 | 14 | 16 | 23 | 23
3-Mo | 10 | 10 | 11 | 15 | 16 | 18

Newsletter Week Placements: 4 appearances (Weeks 11, 16, 25, 30).

Previous Year-End Placements: 2023 (15th).

“Again, why doesn’t he just get an iPhone? They’re good. No effort needed. Let Apple handle everything,” said Justina as she waved her iPhone with the Instagram app open in Justin’s face.

“Sorry Justina, we like free and open source operating systems here. When Nick wrote this review, he was just installing GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel 6a for someone else, but now he is daily driving his own Google Pixel 6a with GrapheneOS. Clutch play.”

“Daily driving?” asked Justina.

“Using it as his main phone.” replied the Emu.

“Oh right, he’s still using that Teracute phone from before, right?” Justina asked Justin, ignoring that it appeared to the The Emu who answered her question.

“Teracube but I’m surprised you remembered that.”

“I’m paying attention!”

“Don’t forget his Droidian-powered Pixel 3a XL.”

“I’ll try not to remember it.”

10. Installing LineageOS on a 2013 Nexus 7 (Wi-Fi)

Installing LineageOS on a 2013 Nexus 7 (Wi-Fi)
Nicholas A. Ferrell. July 28, 2021.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

1-Mo | 11 | 19 | 11 | 10 | 4 | 3

3-Mo

13

12

6

6

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1-Mo | 5 | 8 | 18 | 14 | 11 | 16
3-Mo | 4 | 5 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 13

Newsletter Week Placements: 13 appearances (Weeks 1, 12, 17, 19-20, 22-24 27-28, 31, 33, 46)

Previous Year-End Placements: 2021 (49th), 2022 (22nd), 2023 (19th).

“Although LineageOS discontinued support for the 2013 Nexus 7 tablet in early 2024, Nick’s 2021 article on installing it had its best year yet, posting its first-ever year-end top-10.”

“So you can’t even use this thing anymore?” asked Justina.

“Well you can, it just won’t receive updates. However, you’ll be relieved to know that Nick installed a LineageOS ROM which is receiving updates.”

“I’m not relieved to know that,” replied Justina blankly. “There better not be any more outdated tech articles.”

The Emu looked straight ahead, said nothing, and handed Justin the next envelope.

“There is going to be another, spill it, Bird!” yelled Justina with a hint of panic.

“Well…” said The Emu.

9. Yuki’s Hair Color in A Sign of Affection

Yuki’s Hair Color in A Sign of Affection
Nicholas A. Ferrell. February 2, 2024.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

1-Mo | N/A | 3 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 10

3-Mo

4

1

1

7

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1-Mo | 8 | 13 | X | 18 | 17 | 17
3-Mo | 7 | 12 | 13 | 17 | 19 | 15

Newsletter Week Placements: 14 appearances (Weeks 7-19, 29) and 6 top placements (Weeks 10-14, 16)

“Are you kidding me!? Again with the anime hair color?”

“Here I thought you’d be happy it wasn’t another outdated tech article,” said Justin.

“My concerns in that area did not negate my concerns about the HAIR COLOR,” responded Justina, admittedly entirely fairly.

“This is the same show as Itsuomi. Here, the main heroine, Yuki, has strawberry-colored hair. Anime being anime, you’d think maybe there’s no deeper meaning, right? But then we see a flashback to her childhood and a year earlier in high school – you’re not going to believe this.”

Justina says nothing.

“She had brown hair.”

“Wow,” said Justina without a hint of emotion.

“Nick explored the significance of her dying her hair in the context of her character.”

“Did he find anything?” asked Justina, hoping that there was at least some point to this.

“I think his conjecture was good.”

“Alright fine. It sounds a little higher-effort than the Itsulami one.”

“Itsuomi,” said a mysterious voice which may or may not be The Emu.

“I don’t care, I already rejected him,” said Justina.

“Wow, it’s as if you think any 2D boy you don’t want to go out with isn’t a flesh and blood human being. I’m a little hashtag-triggered right now.” said Justin while pretending to shudder.

Justina stared blankly at Justin, then returned to her pancakes.

8. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis

The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis
Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 18, 2022.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

1-Mo | 7 | 4 | 7 | 11 | 10 | X

3-Mo

7

5

8

12

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1-Mo | 22 | 18 | 9 | 4 | 10 | 9
3-Mo | 15 | 17 | 14 | 8 | 6 | 8

Newsletter Week Placements: 9 appearances (Weeks 3, 6-7, 9, 11, 18, 40, 44, 48)

Previous Year-End Placements: 2022 (12th), 2023 (4th).

“Wait when was ‘generation 2’,” asked Justina, with a distinct hint of suspicion and hostlity.

“1998 in Japan, 2000 in the United States.”

“This is more outdated tech!”

“No no. The old Pokémon games are beloved to this day. Nick is even playing one now.”

“That doesn’t make it not outdated.”

“I’ll have you know that the stat change introduced in generation two affects more than 100 Pokémon to this very day in generation 9.”

“Wait, they never went back and reassessed that?” asked Justina, who had noticeably calmed down.

“Right, they only tinkered with the stats of a few older Pokémon.”

“But isn’t that unfair? So the new Pokémon get thrown in while the old ones were designed for a 1990s environment?”

“You know… you may have a point there, Justina.” replied Justin, nodding.

“And isn’t Jigglypuff one of the old ones?”

“I do not appreciate your aggressive form of question, but it is, yes.”

“So it is also being discriminated against.”

“Wigglytuff, its evolution, got a small stat boost later on, but yes, it is.”

“Unbelievable. I’m boycotting Pokémon,” said Justina.

“You never played despite my entreaties,” replied Justin.

“For good reason I see,” said Justina right before she took another bit from her stack of pancakes.

7. Broken Optical Audio Cable Door “Fix”

Broken Optical Audio Cable Door “Fix”
Nicholas A. Ferrell. September 16, 2023.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

1-Mo | 9 | 11 | 9 | 12 | 23 | 24

3-Mo

10

10

13

13

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1-Mo | 17 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 6
3-Mo | 17 | 11 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 3

Newsletter Week Placements: 14 appearances (Weeks 16, 24-25, 38-41, 43-46, 48-49)

“Wait, what’s an optical audio cable?” asked Justina.

“It carries sound – Nick uses one to connect his soundbar to his TV,” explained Justin.

“A what? His TV doesn’t have sound?” asked Justina.

“No, most built-in TV speakers are bad, so he uses a soundbar,” explained Justin.

“I don’t know. Mine work fine.”

Both Justin and The Emu looked at Justina sadly.

“What!? They’re fine!”

“Say no more, we’ll get you a better set-up for your birthday,” said Justin.

“I’m fine!”

“All of that aside,” Justin continued, speaking to the audience, “this is actually a neat little DIY trick, so be sure to give it a read if you use optical audio cables in your sound set-up.”

(The fix still works!)

6. Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013)

Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013)
Nicholas A. Ferrell. July 5, 2021.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

1-Mo | 5 | 9 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 4

3-Mo

8

6

4

4

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1-Mo | 4 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 6 | 12
3-Mo | 3 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 10

Newsletter Week Placements: 20 appearances (Weeks 1, 4-5, 10, 15, 17, 20, 22-25, 27-28, 31-32, 37, 41, 43, 45-46) and 2 top placements (Weeks 5, 22)

Previous Year-End Placements: 2021 (9th), 2022 (5th), 2023 (5th).

“Funny enough, Ubuntu Touch discontinued support for the Google Nexus 7 tablet earlier this year,” said Justin.

“What did I say about outdated tech articles!?” said Justina with some irritation. “Why are both of these tablet articles ranked so high!?”

Neither Justin or The Emu had an answer to this question, especially since the Ubuntu Touch installer no longer as an option for installing the last-supported version of the operating system on a Nexus 7.

5. The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei

The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 14, 2021.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

1-Mo | 12 | 6 | 14 | 2 | 5 | 8

3-Mo

11

8

5

5

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1-Mo | 3 | 10 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 6
3-Mo | 6 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4

Newsletter Week Placements: 21 appearances (Weeks 6, 15, 17-18, 21, 23, 27-28, 30-31, 35-39, 42, 48-52) and 6 top placements (Weeks 6, 17-18, 21, 38-39)

Previous Year-End Placements: 2021 (2nd), 2022 (2nd), 2023 (1st).

“Wow, what happened with this this article? It was higher before, right?” asked Justina with a hint of concern, as if the world as she knew it had changed.

“It definitely had a weak 2024 compared to 2021-2023, but when your ‘weak’ year lands you in 5th place, ‘weak’ may be more of a compliment than anything,” replied Justin reassuringly.

“I’m not so sure,” said Justina.

“It did perform best in the last quarter, and the investigation into the (almost certainly invented) story of Sōseki’s translation of I love you into Japanese is timeless, so I expect it will return in 2025 with another high placement.”

Justina did not look convinced.

4. Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021)

Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021)
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 28, 2021.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

1-Mo | 4 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 2

3-Mo

6

4

3

2

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1-Mo | 2 | 4 | 5 | 11 | 13 | 13
3-Mo | 2 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 8 | 12

Newsletter Week Placements: 28 appearances (Weeks 1-5, 7-9, 12-13, 15-17, 20-21, 23-30, 32, 35-37, 42) and 1 top placement (Week 15)

Previous Year-End Placements: 2021 (14th), 2022 (4th), 2023 (6th).

Justina glared at the “2021” in the title.

“Look, I know what you’re thinking. Yes, it’s outdated. No, it should not be the 4th most-visited article. But look, most of the app recommendations are still solid. Nick really should make a new F-Droid article though…”

Justina said nothing and returned to her pancakes.

“Sometimes silence speaks louder than words,” a soft voice from the general direction of The Emu rang out.

Intermission V

“So you know how you love the out-dated tech articles,” Justin asked Justina.

Justina glared at Justin.

“Nick wanted everyone to see that his outdated devices are alive and well. See below.”

Justina stared blankly at the photograph.

“On the top we have Nick’s two Google Nexus 7 tablets. The left one is open to the Ubuntu Touch home screen. The right one is the LineageOS Nexus 7 with F-Droid open to the DecSync app – recall that Nick’s DecSync review landed in 54th place. As you can see if you zoom in, DecSync CC has not been updated in three years. On the bottom we have Nick’s Logitech K310 keyboard, which is still washable and sometimes used as a backup. On the number pad is the Teracube 2e open to the /e/ OS app store, so you can see his is still running /e/. He said he took this photo on December 30, 2024.”

Justina shook her head.

Articles 3-1

3. Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2

Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 5, 2023.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

1-Mo | X | X | X | X | 2 | 1

3-Mo

X

X

14

1

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1-Mo | 1 | 2 | 6 | 2 | 7 | 3
3-Mo | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2

Newsletter Week Placements: 28 appearances (Weeks 19-35, 38-45, 47, 51-52) and 11 top placements (Weeks 23-24, 26-31, 33, 41-42)

“Is this more hair color!?” Justina said while glaring at Justin.

“It’s even worse,” replied Justin.

“Oh, ok. Carry on.” (Apparently there is nothing worse than more hair color.)

“Nick wrote his review of the first season of The Angel Next Door Spoils Rotten, which finished 16th this year, before a second season was announced. After a second season was announced, his review started attracting more viewers. He had predicted that there would be a second season, so he wrote an article about having had good foresight to review the first season.”

“So this is entirely self-referential?” asked Justina.

“More or less,” answered Justin.

“So… why is it here?” asked Justina.

“That’s a good question,” said Justin. It broke out in May, was our top article in June and July, and held the top three-month ranking at the end of four consecutive months from June-September. I guess people search for information about the second season and this ranks?”

“So what you’re telling me is that Nick wrote this article as a joke and Google took the joke seriously so now it is somehow a resource about the second season being announced?” asked Justin, who is following this issue surprisingly closely.

“So it seems,” nodded Justin, impressed that Justina was engaged.

“So why is it doing better than the actual review of the first season,” asked Justina?

“That is also a good question. It is most likely because more people search for information about the second season, but Nick concedes it is possible this article cannibalized his more substantive article. On the flip-side…”

(The Emu flaps, as if to emphasize Justin’s saying “flip-side,” Justina is too focused on what Justin is saying to notice, however.)

“…The review is linked prominently in the joke article, so for all we know the joke article is actually helping the review,” explained Justin.

“I see…” said Justina.

2. An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search

An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search
Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 18, 2022.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

1-Mo | 6 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 5

3-Mo

2

3

2

3

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1-Mo | 9 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1
3-Mo | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1

Newsletter Week Placements: 34 appearances (Weeks 6-11, 14-15, 19-22, 24, 26, 33-52) and 13 top placements (Weeks 19-20, 34-36, 40, 43-48, 52)

Previous Year-End Placements: 2023 (7th).

“Oh great, the review of the search engine no one actually uses did even better. Wait, how is it not number one? It has been the best article for five months in a row?”

“Indeed – Nick’s review of the search engine that no one uses rose from 7th in 2023 to the runner-up position in 2024, and as the above tables indicate, it was the strongest article for much of the year.”

“Should I ask why?” asked Justina.

“Let’s say yes,” replied Justin.

“No,” said Justina, curtly.

“So since you asked…”

“I did not ask!”

“Nick suspects there are two possible reasons the review does well. Firstly, Norton customers may see the search tool and wonder what it is. Secondly, Norton may have some Black Friday sales which explain its success in the fall – although its best month in terms of views was actually February.”

Justina sighed.

1. Cycling Doping Fallacies

Cycling Doping Fallacies
Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 5, 2024.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

1-Mo | 1 | 10 | X | X | X | X

3-Mo

1

21

X

X

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1-Mo | X | X | X | X | X | X
3-Mo | X | X | X | X | X | X

Newsletter Week Placements: 5: appearances (Weeks 1-5) and 3 top placements (Weeks 1-3).

“How is this number one!? It disappeared entirely from the ranking after April!?” asked a confused Justina. “Oh wait, is it that thing that happened in 2021 and 2022?”

“It is! Thanks to the Browser newsletter and Hacker News, Nick’s essay on placing doped cycling results in context is the most-visited article of 2024.”

The Emu applauds.

“There is something kind of funny about this article being in first-place,” said Justin.

Justina, apparently not interested in doping in cycling, returns to her pancakes.

“We can think of Hacker News as doping, right? So this article came out of nowhere and put up big numbers thanks to Hacker News-EPO. Then it was caught in a drug test and reverted to form. Its trajectory makes a ton of sense when we think of it like that.”

The Emu nods. Justina stares blankly and returns to her breakfast.

Conclusion

“This wraps up our fifth annual year-end review, although I suppose we did not have to do too much this year,” said Justin, referring to the fact that the esteemed Administrator and Editor of The New Leaf Journal handled 69 out of 81 articles before turning things over.

“Thank goodness,” replied Justina. “But I noticed another problem with the ranking other than the ones I already complained about.”

“What’s that?” asked Justin.

“Where are our dialogues!?”

“I agree with Justina. For those of you who do not know – which is probably most of you given the evidence in the ranking, Justina and I have a long-running New Leaf Journal dialogue series. You can find descriptions of our 55 regular dialogues with links in the Collected Justin and Justina Dialogues archive.”

“I expect to see them on the ranking next year,” said Justina to you (she is staring straight into your soul).

“I personally recommend starting with our recent 2025 additions, Free as a bird. Free as in bird. and Justin and Justina Ikea Seat Cushion,” opined Justin.

Photograph from Justin and Justina Ikea Seat Cushion.

“Please start with An Abyssinian Guinea Pig Birthday Present and Merry Christmas and Who checks the mail these days? instead,” countered Justina.

“That last one is infuriating,” Justin warned.

The Emu nods.

“Not as infuriating as A Christmas Present Struggle,”countered Justina.

The Emu adopted a contemplative posture as if he was trying to decide which of the two admittedly infuriating dialogues was more infuriating. With that, the trio enjoyed their New Year’s Day.

# items[].object.summary
I took a break from working on bringing 2024 to a close to write a short article bringing December 2024, our busiest non-Hacker News month on record, to a proper conclusion.

# items[].object.content
Yesterday marked the end of a month and year. As always the end of the month means its time for our (mostly) regular New Leaf Journal month-end review. I would have waited a few more days to publish this but for the fact I am publishing my full 2024 review later today and that article depends in small part on having our December statistics in order.

I took this photo on College Place in Brooklyn Heights on December 30, 2024. We hit the dead end for 2024, but we have plenty to work on in 2025.

Without further ado, let us work through the month that was.

New December Leaves at The New Leaf Journal

I published 14 new articles in December, with one being our November 2024 Review.

My highlight article of the month was one I wrote on a whim. After coming across a list by another online writer of 52 things he learned in 2024, I put together my own list – but with 54 Things I Learned in 2024 instead of 52 (have to keep the lists divisible by three).

December saw three new Brooklyn photography posts. In my second article of the month, I wrote Victory Chimes Schooner in Brooklyn Bridge Park, wherein I documented the park’s newest maritime resident and researched its interesting history – which includes being depicted on the back of the Maine state quarter. One day later, I wrote Musing About Tesla Cybertruck at Brooklyn Bridge Park, which begins with a photograph suggested by the title and ends with my reminiscing about the Sega 32X. On the eve of Christmas Eve, I published Brooklyn Heights Promenade Christmas Tree. The title says it all, but I encourage you to take a look because it is a fine Christmas tree.

I published two visual novel reviews in December. First, I reviewed the original 2010 version of The Dandelion Girl after having previously reviewed the 2016 re-mastered version. While the two versions share the same artwork, the scripts differ from one another and, in turn, from the 1961 science fiction short story by Robert F. Young of the same name on which both are based. In my penultimate article of the month, I reviewed Christmas Rose, a short 2013 original language visual novel which can be described as a love story between the seasons where one of the seasons has tsundere tendencies.

Staying in the broad genre, I published my Extra Anime Awards for 2023 on December 18, 2024. Readers may wonder why I published a supplement to my 2023 anime year-end review, which I had published on January 6, 2023, in December. Is it really better late than never? I plan to refer back to some of my extra 2023 awards in my soon-upcoming 2024 anime review articles, so that served as my motivation to finally churn out something I had drafted in part several months ago.

December saw two articles inspired by current events. First, I published TMI in Landlord-Tenant Relationships, which was prompted by some bizarre stories about Mr. Luigi Mangione, who has been charged (with good reason) for murdering Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group which, for me at least, do not add up beyond a strange attempt to make the violent gentleman sympathetic. I then cast my eyes abroad, raising unexpected questions based on a recent investigative support of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s “inner circle” in President Lukashenko’s Hairstylist.

I published two tech articles of sort. First, I conducted an open source software investigation in mpv Media Player’s December Santa Hat. Next, I shared the news our readers have surely been waiting for: The New Leaf Journal has a “safe” rating from Norton Safeweb.

I wrap up my review with my fun anecdote of the month. In my first New Leaf Journal article, I told the story of how I accidentally purchased a tampered-with Chobani Flips yogurt at the grocery store on December 12, 2018. At the same grocery store on December 12, 2024, I came across a very past-its-prime carton of cashew milk that I had planned to buy before checking the sell-by date. Things come full circle in a way in Sell by November Chashew Milk in December.

The Emu Café Social

I was also somewhat busy on our short-form publishing sister-site, The Emu Café Social. I wrote about troubleshooting an issue with my Lenovo T400 laptop, since resolved. I did not buy a Google Pixel Tablet but I did install Droidian on my Google Pixel 3a XL. I resumed my Pokémon play-through project, including rekindling some memories on Christmas. I was surprised to learn that people order delivery from Krispy Kreme and that it is apparently possible to flee a Middle Eastern country in a Russian military plane without having once thought about the possibility before being airborne. You can see my full collection of December posts, including some I left out of my short recap, here.

The Newsletter Leaf Journal

I published four editions of our Saturday newsletter, all of which include links from around the web (with my sometimes-punny commentary) and weekly visitor notes not found in The New Leaf Journal proper. You will find links to the four newsletters below:

Newsletter Leaf Journal CCX 〜 Chiming in December 7, 2024 Issue 210 of The Newsletter Leaf Journal features links to the three newest New Leaf Journal articles, which cover everything from a 2010 visual novel, 1994 racing games, and 1900 boats, 21 links from around the web, and other news and notes.

Newsletter Leaf Journal CCXI 〜 Not over-sharing December 14, 2024 Issue 211 of The Newsletter Leaf Journal features links to 3 new NLJ articles and several posts on The Emu Café Social, covering everything from current events to donut delivery. You will also fund a punny around the web selection and other news and notes from the week that was.

Newsletter Leaf Journal CCXII 〜 Before the sell-by date December 21, 2024 Our pre-Christmas 2024 newsletter feautures links to the five newest New Leaf Journal leaves, 21 links from around the web, Christmas links from our archive, and the list of our most-visited articles from one of our busiest weeks of 2024.

Newsletter Leaf Journal CCXXIII 〜 A Christmas promenade December 28, 2024 The final Newsletter Leaf Journal of 2024 features links to two new Christmas-themed New Leaf Journal articles, several new posts at The Emu Café Social, 21 links from around the web (with a fair number of punny comments), and a recap of our 52 most-visited article of the week lists from 2024.

If you are looking for interesting links to read from across the internet – my newsletter archive is (if I may humbly suggest) a good place to start.

Most-Turned Leaves of December 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 December 2024 and for the three month October-December period.

DEC
RANK

ARTICLE
(AUTHOR. PUBLISHED.)

3-MONTH
(Change)

1

An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search
N.A. Ferrell. October 18, 2022.

1
(=)

2

Fixing Refresh Rate Issue on 4K TV Monitor
N.A. Ferrell. July 26, 2024.

5
(+13)

3

Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2
N.A. Ferrell. November 5, 2023.

2
(+1)

4

Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships
N.A. Ferrell. July 9, 2024.

6
(+4)

5

The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei
N.A. Ferrell. March 14, 2021.

4
(=)

6

Broken Optical Audio Cable Door "Fix"
N.A. Ferrell. September 16, 2023.

3
(-1)

7

Dragonair Safari in Pokémon Yellow
Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 5, 2023.

7
(+2)

8

A Sign of Affection - Anime Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 28, 2024.

9
(-2)

9

The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis
Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 18, 2022.

8
(-2)

10

Reviewing FrogFind: A Search Engine For Vintage Computers
Nicholas A. Ferrell. July 24, 2022.

15
(+8)

11

Kaori After Story - Visual Novel Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. December 31, 2022.

22
(NEW)

12

Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013)
Nicholas A. Ferrell. July 5, 2021.

10
(-5)

13

Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021)
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 28, 2021.

12
(-2)

14

Height differences in anime romances
Nicholas A. Ferrell, March 22, 2023.

11
(-1)

15

Hair Color in Raven of the Inner Palace
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 15, 2023.

X

16

Installing LineageOS on a 2013 Nexus 7 (Wi-Fi)
Nicholas A. Ferrell. July 28, 2021.

13
(-1)

17

Yuki's Hair Color in A Sign of Affection
Nicholas A. Ferrell. February 2, 2024.

15
(+4)

18

Ghostwriter Markdown Editor Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 7, 2021.

17
(+5)

19

Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage
Nicholas A. Ferrell. February 3, 2023.

X

20

Searching for the Figure Behind the Blob Dylan Tags in NYC and Florida
Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 24, 2021.

X

21

54 Things I Learned in 2024
Nicholas A. Ferrell. December 17, 2024.

X

22

Calvin Coolidge Describes His Mother, Victoria
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 13, 2021.

X

23

Installing GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel 6a
Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 15, 2023.

18
(-2)

24

History of the Mario Party Gloves
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 6, 2022.

X

X

My Logitech Washable Wired Keyboard K310
Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 20, 2024.

16
(-4)

X

Installing Non-Listed Programs in PlayOnLinux
Nicholas A. Ferrell. July 8, 2023.

19
(-2)

X

Iroha Isshiki's Hair is Brown, as Expected?
Nicholas A. Ferrell. February 12, 2021.

20
(+1)

X

The Last Nintendo Wii Games
Nicholas A. Ferrell. August 1, 2023.

21
(-7)

X

The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten - Anime Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 30, 2023.

23
(NEW)

X

The Nice Boat: A Look Back at the School Days Anime
Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 6, 2021.

24
(-9)

After a somewhat up-down-and-up year, December marked our best-ever month in terms of visitors, both in absolute visits and per-day visits that did not involve one of our articles making page one of Hacker News. November 2022 previously held both records for non-Hacker News months, (February 2024 came close to overtaking it in per-day visits). Counting the Hacker News-fueled months, December 2024 slots in as our fifth busiest month behind August 2022, January 2024, May 2022, and March 2021, in that order.

My Norton Safe Search review continued its ranking dominance, topping our monthly chart for the fifth consecutive month – which is now the second longest monthly win streak behind The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei leading the ranking for eight consecutive months (September 2021-April 2022). Norton spent much of the month in second or third, but it pulled away in the final third of December.

It was a second consecutive big month for two articles from July, Fixing Refresh Rate Issue on 4K TV Monitor and Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships, both of which posted top five performances and the latter having been in contention for the top spot until the final days of 2024. Every article in our top 11 save for the Norton Safe Search review, third-place finisher Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2, and 9th place The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis posted their best months of the year in terms of raw page views. Here, I highlight 11th place Kaori After Story - Visual Novel Review, which surged up the rankings in the last few days of December and posted what is to date the best month for any of our many visual novel review articles.

Several articles at the end of our top-24 made their first (and necessarily, only) monthly rankings in 2024. Searching for the Figure Behind the Blob Dylan Tags in NYC and Florida ensured that a BLOB DYLAN article (see BLOB DYLAN collection) would be represented in the monthly ranking for the fourth consecutive year. I published 54 Things I Learned in 2024 on December 17, and on December 31 I learned that it did well enough in two weeks to make the December ranking. Calvin Coolidge Describes His Mother, Victoria (a personal favorite of mine) made its first monthly ranking since November 2022. Finally, History of the Mario Party Gloves, a research article I put together on November 6, 2022, scored its first-ever monthly placement.

Taking leaf

I would ordinarily write about what you can look forward to in the next month – but I will forego that today because I am putting the finishing touches on a full review of the year that now was in 2024. But I will note without offering specifics that I am working on some interesting (I hope, at least) projects for January 2025, so I hope you look forward to them.

# items[].object.name
Best Record vs Best Net Rating in 51 NBA Seasons

# items[].object.summary
Would you rather enter the NBA Playoffs with the best regular season win-loss record or the best net rating? I investigate.

# items[].object.content
I commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Detroit Pistons’ memorable demolition of the heavily-favored Los Angeles Lakers in the 2004 NBA Finals with an article questioning whether the Lakers should have been favored based on the evidence going into the Finals. One point I focused on was that while the Lakers, which had won three of the previous four NBA Championships, posted a better regular season record than the Pistons (56-26 to 54-28), the Pistons had posted a significantly better regular season Net Rating, which is the team’s Offensive Rating (points scored per 100 possessions) minus the team’s Defensive Rating (points allowed per 100 possessions) than the Lakers (+6.6 to +4.2). The Pistons also had a better playoff net rating through the first three rounds, albeit the Lakers faced better competition – notably the Spurs, which had the league’s second best record and best net rating -- in the Western Conference Semifinals. Why did I prefer net rating to raw records or margin? I explained:

The significant point is that over the course of the season, the Pistons were better than the Lakers in terms of their net margin. While we need not get too far in the weeds here, scoring margin is a better indicator of success than the raw win/loss total, which is subject to randomness. (The 2006-07 case of the 58-24 champion Spurs having a better margin than the 67-15 Dallas Mavericks (eliminated in the first round) is a fun, albeit extreme, example case.)
Nicholas A. Ferrell

I noticed a more recent article I wrote examining whether NBA champions are typically stronger (relative to league average) on offense or defense has been receiving some views lately. That, combined with my writing on the 2004 NBA Finals, inspired a new article topic. I present my question: When the team with the NBA’s best record does not have the NBA’s best net rating, does the team with the best record typically have more success in the playoffs than the team with the best net rating?

To illustrate what I mean – let us take a look at the 2003-04 NBA season since that has been the primary subject of two articles (see my related essay on the Pistons’ 2003 NBA Draft decision). While the Pistons and Lakers were the last two teams standing, neither of the finalists topped the NBA in record or net rating. The NBA’s best record belonged to the 61-21 Indiana Pacers, which fell to the Pistons in the East Finals. The 58-24 San Antonio Spurs posted the best net rating at +8.1, but they fell one round earlier to the Lakers in the West Semifinals. So for my query, I would be assessing how well the team with the best record (Pacers) and team with the best net rating (Spurs) fared in the playoffs.

All of this gave me an interesting (I think, at least) survey idea. I decided to go back to the 1973-74 NBA season (the same sample I used in my does defense win championships survey) and for each season since then examine how far the team with the best record and the team with the best net rating advanced in the playoffs . Even if we assume arguendo that net rating is a better marker of team strength than raw win-loss totals, the playoffs bestows home court advantage on the team with the better record – not better net rating – in each series. While the value of home court advantage varies depending on the team and other factors – teams are typically stronger at home than on the road. Because we are looking at the team with the best record in every season going back to 1973-74, we are selecting for the team with home court advantage throughout the NBA Playoffs.

This survey is limited and not entirely fair in cases where the team with the best record and the team with the best net rating are in different conferences. For example, looking again at 2003-04, the team with the best net rating (San Antonio) had a more difficult playoff draw than the team with the best record (Indiana) on account of the fact that the Western Conference was much stronger from top to bottom than the Eastern Conference. While the Spurs were being eliminated by a Shaquille O’Neal/Kobe Bryant-led Lakers team that had won three of the four previous NBA championships in the Western Conference Semifinals, the Pacers were fending off a spirited challenge from a 42-40 Miami Heat team with a (+0.6 net rating). Someone with more time and inclination could do something more interesting with my basic idea.

As a threshold matter, we have to sort out which seasons – going back to 1973-74 – had two different teams secure the best record and best net rating distinctions. It should not come as a surprise to learn that in many seasons, the team with the best win-loss record also had the best net rating. It turns out that of the 51 seasons in our sample, the team with the best record had the best net rating on 30 occasions. I begin by presenting the list of unified best record-best net rating teams along with a column on how far they advanced in the playoffs. See the legend for the advanced column below before the chart:

Champion: Won NBA Championship

Finals: Lost in NBA Finals

ECF/WCF: Lost in Eastern or Western Conference Finals

ESF/WSF: Lost in Eastern or Western Conference Semifinals (note: In some earlier seasons, the semifinal was the first round, I will add a "(1R)" in the case a team was elimited in a semifinal first round)

EQF/WQF: Lost in the Eastern or Western Conference Quarterfinals

Season | Team | Rec | Net | Result
1973-74 | Milwaukee Bucks | 59-23 | +7.6 | NBA Finals
1975-76 | Golden State Warriors | 59-23 | +6.1 | WCF
1977-78 | Portland Trail Blazers | 58-24 | +5.9 | WSF (1R)
1978-79 | Washington Bullets | 54-28 | +4.7 | NBA Finals
1979-80 | Boston Celtics | 61-21 | +7.5 | ECF
1981-82 | Boston Celtics | 63-19 | +6.3 | ECF
1982-83 | Philadelphia 76ers | 65-17 | +7.4 | Champion
1983-84 | Boston Celtics | 62-20 | +6.5 | Champion
1985-86 | Boston Celtics | 67-15 | +9.2 | Champion
1986-87 | Los Angeles Lakers | 65-17 | +9.1 | Champion
1991-92 | Chicago Bulls | 67-15 | +11.0 | Champion
1993-94 | Seattle SuperSonics | 63-19 | +9.5 | WQF
1995-96 | Chicago Bulls | 72-10 | +13.4 | Champion
1996-97 | Chicago Bulls | 69-13 | +12.0 | Champion
1998-99 | San Antonio Spurs | 37-13 | +9.0 | Champion
1999-00 | Los Angeles Lakers | 67-15 | +9.1 | Champion
2000-01 | San Antonio Spurs | 58-24 | +8.6 | WCF
2001-02 | Sacramento Kings | 61-21 | +7.9 | WCF
2007-08 | Boston Celtics | 66-16 | +11.2 | Champion
2008-09 | Cleveland Cavaliers | 66-16 | +10.0 | ECF
2011-12 | Chicago Bulls | 50-16 | +9.1 | EQF
2013-14 | San Antonio Spurs | 62-20 | +8.1 | Champion
2014-15 | Golden State Warriors | 67-15 | +10.2 | Champion
2016-17 | Golden State Warriors | 67-15 | +11.6 | Champion
2017-18 | Houston Rockets | 65-17 | +8.7 | WCF
2018-19 | Milwaukee Bucks | 60-22 | +8.5 | ECF
2019-20 | Milwaukee Bucks | 56-17 | +9.5 | ESF
2020-21 | Utah Jazz | 52-20 | +9.3 | WSF
2021-22 | Phoenix Suns | 64-18 | +7.5 | WSF
2023-24 | Boston Celtics | 64-18 | +11.6 | Champion

In most cases, a team which combines the best record and the best net rating should be safely recognized as the best regular season team. However, as my chart shows, regular season excellence does not guarantee playoff success. Of the 31 best record/best net teams, 14 won the NBA championship for a championship success rate of roughly 45%. To be sure, most teams would happily take 45% championship odds going into the playoffs – but most of our undisputed best teams come up short of the championship. See some other interesting notes on the playoff success of the 31 unified best record/best net teams below:

While only 45% of the teams with the best record/net rating combo won the championship, 14 of the 15 teams that made the NBA Finals won in the Finals. The only best record/best net team to lose in the Finals was the 1973-74 Milwaukee Bucks from the first season in our sample.

From the 1982-83 through 1999-00 seasons, we had 10 teams unify the best record and best net crowns and 9 of those teams won the NBA Championship. But things were less rosy on the ends of our survey. The first six teams on top of the chart all failed to win the championship, and five consecutive teams at the tail end of the chart came up short prior to the Boston Celtics winning from the best record/net position in 2023-24.

28 of the 31 best record/best net teams won at least one playoff round. Two of the one-and-done exceptions, the 1977-78 Portland Trail Blazers and the 2011-2012 Chicago Bulls, were reeling from injuries to their best players, Bill Walton and Derrick Rose respectively. The 1993-94 Seattle SuperSonics suffered a harder-to-explain defeat to the 42-40 Denver Nuggets.

The best team in both categories to fail to win the championship was the 2009-2010 Cleveland Cavaliers, which posted a 66-16 record (best by one game) and +10.0 net rating (best by 0.5). While hindsight is 20/20 and the Cavaliers’ lack of a top-line talent next to 2008-09 NBA MVP LeBron James makes their coming up short less surprising than the statistics indicate, it is worth noting that the Cavaliers posted a 39-2 regular season record at home – and were 39-1 going into their last regular season home game.

There were 21 NBA seasons wherein the team with the best record did not have the best net rating. This, to me, is the more interesting sample since we can compare how these teams fared in the playoffs. I present the chart below:

Season | Best Rec | Rec | Result | Best Net | Net | Result
1974-75 | Boston Celtics | 60-22* | ECF | Washington Bullets | +6.7 | NBA Finals
1976-77 | Los Angeles Lakers | 53-29 | WCF | Portland Trail Blazers | +5.2 | Champion
1980-81 | Boston Celtics | 62-20* | Champion | Philadelphia 76ers | +7.5 | ECF
1984-85 | Boston Celtics | 63-19 | NBA Finals | Los Angeles Lakers | +7.1 | Champion
1987-88 | Los Angeles Lakers | 62-20 | Champion | Boston Celtics | +6.0 | ECF
1988-89 | Detroit Pistons | 63-19 | Champion | Cleveland Cavaliers | +7.7 | EQF
1989-90 | Los Angeles Lakers | 63-19 | WSF | Phoenix Suns | +7.0 | WCF
1990-91 | Portland Trail Blazers | 63-19 | WCF | Chicago Bulls | +9.5 | Champion
1992-93 | Phoenix Suns | 62-20 | NBA Finals | Seattle SuperSonics | +7.3 | WCF
1994-95 | San Antonio Spurs | 62-20 | WCF | Utah Jazz | +8.6 | WQF
1997-98 | Utah Jazz | 62-20 | NBA Finals | Los Angeles Lakers | +8.2 | WCF
2002-03 | San Antonio Spurs | 60-22 | Champion | Dallas Mavericks | +8.4 | WCF
2003-04 | Indiana Pacers | 61-21 | ECF | San Antonio Spurs | +8.1 | WSF
2004-05 | Phoenix Suns | 62-20 | WCF | San Antonio Spurs | +8.7 | Champion
2005-06 | Detroit Pistons | 64-18 | ECF | San Antonio Spurs | +7.7 | WSF
2006-07 | Dallas Mavericks | 67-15 | WQF | San Antonio Spurs | +9.3 | Champion
2009-10 | Cleveland Cavaliers | 61-21 | ESF | Orlando Magic | +8.1 | ECF
2010-11 | Chicago Bulls | 62-20 | ECF | Miami Heat | +8.2 | NBA Finals
2012-13 | Miami Heat | 66-16 | Champion | Oklahoma City Thunder | +9.8 | WSF
2015-16 | Golden State Warriors | 73-9 | NBA Finals | San Antonio Spurs | +11.3 | WSF
2022-23 | Milwaukee Bucks | 58-24 | EQF | Boston Celtics | +6.5 | ECF

To begin, my survey could have been complicated in a scenario wherein (A) the teams with the best record and best net rating are from different conferences and (B) they are independently eliminated from the playoffs in the same round. Perhaps surprisingly, this did not happen in any of the 21 cases in our sample – so I can choose which team advanced further in the playoffs in each case.

The first thing to look at is how many NBA Champions come from this table. We see that there are five cases each where the team with only the best record and the team with only the best net rating won the championship.

Best Record Only Champion | Best Net Only Champion
2012-13 Miami Heat | 2006-07 San Antonio Spurs
2002-03 San Antonio Spurs | 2004-05 San Antonio Spurs
1988-89 Detroit Pistons | 1990-91 Chicago Bulls
1987-88 Los Angeles Lakers | 1984-85 Los Angeles Lakers
1980-81 Boston Celtics | 1976-77 Portland Trail Blazers

Teams with the best record have a small advantage in NBA Finals runner-up finishes (4-2) while best net rating teams have the advantage in winning at least one playoff round (12-10). Each category features two teams which failed to win a single playoff round despite their lofty credentials going into the postseason. Every other team on the table won at least one playoff round.

The team with the best record advanced further in the playoffs than the team with the best net rating on 11 out of 21 seasons in sample – which comes out to a wash for all practical intents and purposes.

Perhaps the most interesting years to consider are where the team with the best record met the team with the best net rating in the playoffs. This happened in 10 of the 21 seasons on our survey – perhaps not too surprising given that having either the best record or the best net rating credential bodes well for potential playoff success. Let us draw a new table to isolate these showdowns.

Season | Round | Best Record | Best Net | Result
74-75 | East Finals | Boston Celtics | Washington Bullets | Bullets 4-2
76-77 | West Finals | Los Angeles Lakers | Portland Trail Blazers | Trail Blazers 4-0
80-81 | East Finals | Boston Celtics | Philadelphia 76ers | Celtics 4-3
84-85 | NBA Finals | Boston Celtics | Los Angeles Lakers | Lakers 4-2
89-90 | West Semifinals | Los Angeles Lakers | Phoenix Suns | Suns 4-1
92-93 | West Finals | Phoenix Suns | Seattle SuperSonics | Suns 4-3
97-98 | West Finals | Utah Jazz | Los Angeles Lakers | Jazz 4-0
02-03 | West Finals | San Antonio Spurs | Dallas Mavericks | Spurs 4-2
04-05 | West Finals | Phoenix Suns | San Antonio Spurs | Spurs 4-1
10-11 | East Finals | Chicago Bulls | Miami Heat | Heat 4-1

Despite lacking home court advantage, the team with the better net rating won 6 of the 10 best record/best net showdowns in our sample. Eight of the 10 match-ups occurred in the conference finals, with one coming in the NBA Finals and another in the West Semifinals. While some of these match ups were close in records and ratings – for example in 1989-90 Lakers and Suns finished with the same net rating to the first decimal and the Spurs and Mavericks had matching 60-22 records in 2002-03 – it is notable that net rating did, slightly more often than not in our very small sample, overcome home court advantage.

Before continuing, I want to highlight one very peculiar season from our larger chart showing seasons when different teams posted the best record and best net rating. Let us turn our attention to 2015-16. In that season, which happens to be the last NBA season I followed closely, the Golden State Warriors posted what remains the best single-season record in NBA history at 73 wins and 9 losses. One would think that a team with a 73-9 record would easily lead the league in net rating. Notably, the team that had previously held the best single-season record mark, the 1995-96 Bulls at 72-10, did have the best net rating in our 51-season sample by a wide margin (+13.4, 1.4 points better than second place, the 1996-97 Bulls). However, 2015-16 defied expectations in the net rating department. While the Warriors had the best-ever record, their net rating of +10.7 was only good for second-best in the NBA. The San Antonio Spurs, which finished six games back of the Warriors at a monstrous 67-15, posted the NBA’s best net rating of +11.3. For perspective, the Spurs +11.3 mark in 2015-16 was the fifth best single-season net rating of the last 51 years, trailing only the 95-96 and 96-97 Bulls (+13.4 and +12.0 respectively) and the 2016-17 Warriors and 2023-24 Boston Celtics (both +11.6). In a season in which one team posts the best record in NBA history and another the fifth best net rating in a 51-season sample, one would think that we have identified the season’s NBA champion! Alas, it was not to be. The Spurs were defeated in the Western Conference Semifinals by the Oklahoma City Thunder, which posted an excellent but comparatively pedestrian 55-27 record and +7.5 net rating. The Warriors then had to overcome a 3-1 series deficit to defeat that Thunder team in the Western Conference Finals before taking a 3-1 series lead in the NBA Finals. However, the Warriors created a second bit of history, after having been the first (and to date, only) NBA team to end a regular season with single-digit losses, the Warriors became the first, and to date only, team to lose a 3-1 series lead in the NBA Finals. When it was all said and done, the NBA Champion in the season in which the Warriors and Spurs made history was the Cleveland Cavaliers – with a regular season record of 57-25 and a net rating of +6.4.

Now let us combine our two major charts – the first showing the teams which had the best record and net rating in a single season and the second showing the teams which had the best of one but not the other. In 14 seasons, the NBA Champion had the best record and net rating. In five additional seasons, the champion had the best record but not the best rating, and in five other seasons the champion had the best net rating but not the best record. Thus, we find that 19 of the last 51 NBA Champions had the best regular season record and 19 of 51 had the best regular season net rating. Let us go through some of our findings:

In the 31 seasons where one team had the best record and the best net rating, 14 of those teams won the NBA championship (45%).

19 of the last 51 NBA champions had the best regular season record but not the best regular season net rating (37%)

19 of the last 51 NBA champions had the best regular season net rating but not the best regular season record (37%)

24 of the last 51 NBA champions had at least either the best regular season record or the best net rating (47%)

In seasons where the different teams had the best regular season record and best net rating, one of those two teams won the championship 10 out of 21 times (48%)

In seasons where different teams had the best regular season record and best net rating, the team with the best record won the championship 5 out of 21 times (24%)

In seasons where the different teams had the best regular season record and best net rating, the team with the best net rating won the championship 5 out of 21 times (24%)

Taken together – no matter how you slice it – the field beats the team (or teams) with the best record/net rating slightly more often than not. However, in light of the fact that there are either 14 or 15 out of 16 playoff teams (post “play-in tournament” these days), both best record and best net rating are good places to start in making an NBA championship prediction.

After I put together my initial survey charts, I came across another statistical measure that I could test instead of net rating. This measure is called Simple Rating System, or SRS. To put it simply, SRS takes into account the margin of the team being evaluated and the margin of the team’s opponents against the league average. See a simple explanation. I am not as familiar with SRS as I am with net rating, but it differs in that it considers raw margin instead of the difference between offensive and defensive rating and it takes into account the average performance of the team’s opponents.

I suspected that SRS would not differ greatly from Net Rating in identifying the strongest team in a given regular season, and that turned out to be correct. In our 51 season sample, there are only six seasons where the top-ranked team in SRS was not the top-ranked team in Net Rating:

Season | Best Net | Best SRS
78-79 | Washington Bullets | San Antonio Spurs
84-85 | Los Angeles Lakers | Milwaukee Bucks
94-95 | Utah Jazz | Seattle SuperSonics
97-98 | Los Angeles Lakers | Chicago Bulls
15-16 | San Antonio Spurs | Golden State Warriors
21-22 | Phoenix Suns | Boston Celtics

In the first two cases, the team with the better Net Rating advanced further in the playoffs. The Bullets made the Finals in 1978-79, defeating the top-ranked team in SRS, the San Antonio Spurs, in the Eastern Conference Finals (the Spurs were in the Eastern Conference back in the day). 1984-85 is the biggest miss for SRS vs Net Rating. The Lakers led the NBA in Net Rating and won the championship while the Bucks were unceremoniously swept out of the second round of the Eastern Conference Playoffs.

While the Bucks’ 84-85 playoff run may have been a disappointment, it was nothing compared to the Net Rating vs SRS wash we saw in 1994-95. The Utah Jazz had the best Net Rating and lost in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs to the surprising eventual champion Houston Rockets. In full consideration of the facts and circumstances – things went even worse for the SRS-leading Seattle SuperSonics. While the Jazz were bounced by the defending and eventual NBA Champions, the Sonics fell 3-1 to the Los Angeles Lakers, a team which actually posted a negative 0.01 SRS to go with a minus 0.2 net rating.

The final three splits all favor SRS. The best season for SRS is 1997-98, where the SRS-leading Chicago Bulls (third in net rating) won the NBA Championship while the Net Rating leading Lakers were swept in the Western Conference Finals. If we used SRS instead of Net Rating, this would have been a case of the team with the best SRS defeating the team with the best record in the NBA Finals – although the best-record Utah Jazz and Bulls both finished 62-20, with the Jazz taking home court advantage by virtue of having won both regular season meetings against the Bulls. In 2015-16, the Warriors ranked first in SRS over the Spurs and, as I noted in a long aside above, advanced further in the playoffs. Finally, in 2021-22, the SRS-leading Celtics made the NBA Finals while the Phoenix Suns, which had the best record and net rating, were swept in the Western Conference Semifinals.

Below, I prevent a chart showing the two unique "best record vs best SRS" matchups that were not covered by my best record vs best net rating chart.

Season | Round | Best Record | Best SRS | Result
78-79 | East Finals | Washington Bullets | San Antonio Spurs | Bullets 4-3
97-98 | NBA Finals | Utah Jazz | Chicago Bulls | Bulls 4-2

1978-79 only appears on this chart because the Bullets had the best record and net rating. 1984-85 was a best record vs best net matchup but does not appear here because the Bucks, which had the best SRS, did not meet the team with the best record. 1997-98 remains on the chart, but whereas the best record vs best net chart was a win for the team with the best record, with the Jazz beating the net-rating leading Lakers in the Western Conference finals, it flips on the SRS chart with the SRS-leading Chicago Bulls defeating the Jazz one round later in the NBA Finals.

For the limited purposes of my survey – there is very little difference between Net Rating and SRS since the team with the best of one has the best of the other in 45 of the 51 seasons in our sample (88%) and the six seasons in which they differ do not show a decisive trend with respect to playoff success one way or the other. However, I am sure that more serious and thorough studies may yield useful information regarding whether regular season Net Rating or SRS is a better predictor of playoff success. I will submit that in light of the fact that NBA teams play more games in conference than out, the distinctiveness of SRS vs Net Rating likely varies to some extent based on the difference in strength between the conferences (or more often than not this century, how much better the West is than the East in any given year).

Having completed my simple survey – I can conclude from a small sample that having the best record, net rating, or SRS bodes equally well for a team’s championship prospects. Moreover, it should come as no surprise that having the best record, net rating, and SRS bodes far better than having the best of one but not the others. But in the end – a tiny majority of NBA champions do not lead any of the categories (we come out to 25/51 if we add the SRS-leading 1997-98 Bulls to our list), so the field wins slightly more often than not.

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Christmas Rose – Visual Novel Review

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A short original English language visual novel which teaches us that seasons are people and people have feelings.

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On December 30, 2013, an English-language visual novel circle called OpenH Studio released Christmas Rose, a very short original English language visual novel (OELVN) written in Ren’Py. The novel is entirely kinetic (meaning no player input other than advancing the text) and takes about 10 minutes to read to completion. Open H described it succinctly: “A short Winter to Summer Love Story.”

Title screen of Christmas Rose. I will address the rose in later image captions.

To be sure, this Christmas Rose is substantially fluffier fare than The Christmas Rose, a 1913 short story by Lizzie Deas which I re-printed and discussed in brief back in 2021. Moreover, it has little to do with either Christmas or the botanical Christmas rose. But reviewing visual novels around Christmas has become something of a tradition the last couple of years, so let us keep things going with a look at Open H’s Christmas Rose.

Christmas Rose Details

Before continuing, note that while I will be talking about official websites for Christmas Rose that are no longer online, Christmas Rose’s original download link remains online.

Mediafire Download

Archived Download Link

The official website of OpenH Studio and Christmas Rose is no longer extant. The most recent Wayback Machine capture was made on June 23, 2015. The website only had two pages, with one being for Christmas Rose and the other being an About page for OpenH. Unfortunately, there are no archived captures of the About page.

The original Christmas Rose page was published on the same day the novel was first made available for download: December 30, 2013. OpenH Studio described it as follows: “This is a short Winter to Summer Love Story” while also noting that it is a kinetic novel. Beneath the description of the novel, the team wrote “Even though it never came out exactly on 25th December 2013, thank you.” From this, I gather that OpenH Studio had originally planned to release Christmas Rose on Christmas but came up five days short of the goal.

Because this was a Ren’Py project, I suspected that the there may be threads about it on Lemma Soft Forums, which is a site for independent visual novel projects (mostly, albeit not exclusively, novels written in Ren’Py). OpenH Studios published a link to the novel on the forum at 9:40 AM on December 30, 2013, and that thread with its mostly positive responses is still live. OpenH Studios deleted the content of its posts at some later date, meaning that its post opening the original thread is empty in the live version of the forum, but you can see the original, which copies the description from the OpenH website, in an April 1, 2015 capture of the thread. I found a tangentially-related thread by BEERINGS, who is credited as the sprite artist for Christmas Rose, started on November 13, 2013. Beerings listed his or her resume for those in the market for a sprite artist and listed Christmas Rose as a Collaboration. As we know, Christmas Rose would not be released for another month and a half, so we can infer that it was in progress on November 13, 2013.

Christmas Rose has a Visual Novel Database E ntry which includes a link to the official download and other information noted on the original website. VNDB notes a Spanish-language translation of Christmas Rose was completed by Sakashi Plans and made available for download on January 1, 2019. Those interested in the Spanish version can find it here (I have not tested it and do not know anything about it other than the fact it exists). Ren’Ai Archive, which is a comprehensive listing of Ren’Py visual novels going back to 2001, has a page for Christmas Rose but no additional information other than a note that the novel has 2,027 words.

Running Christmas Rose

The Christmas Rose download comes with executables for Windows and Linux/MacOS. I could not get the native Linux version to work, even after tinkering for 15-20 minutes to see if I could resolve the permissions issue I was seeing in my console. Because I was just playing this novel out of curiosity rather than as part of a larger project, I opted to run the Windows version on top of WINE. The Windows version ran on top of my system WINE-staging on Linux without any issue.

Christmas Rose Review

As I noted at the top, Christmas Rose is a very short (about 10 minutes to read) visual novel with no interactive elements.

The novel begins with a verbose monologue about the majesty of the seasons and the mystery of their changing.

While this monologue sets up the novel, it is admittedly a bit of a clunker.

We then learn it is winter in the world of Christmas Rose. But the fact that it is winter has little effect on the heroine of our short kinetic visual novel.

I think the hair color situation here is obvious enough to not require one of my patented hair color articles.

The heroine is named Summer. There is significance to her name. The young lady is in fact the personification of the season summer.

What is Summer to do during winter? Her humble abode has a nature-powered super computer (so we are told). She uses this computer to communicate with Winter, who as you may guess, is the personification of winter.

The second line should probably be is as often as not but I was too distracted by the nature-based super computer to notice on my first reading.

Winter had sent her an image of a rose in the snow (Note: The scene leaves an ambiguous first impression). Summer responded with a teasing lecture about how roses (which she is known for, being summer and all) do not bloom in the winter.

I am aware that this rose looks far more like the tea rose I photographed in Brooklyn Heights than a Christmas rose. Morever, I will note that the game makes clear it means a botanical Christmas rose, not a rose which otherwise happens to bloom on Christmas. However, much like some questionable coffee-making logic in another OELVN I reviewed called EDDA Café, I will not miss the forest through the technicali-trees (I'm sorry).

Winter offered a business-like response explaining that the Christmas rose does bloom in winter, but he kept things short because he was busy. Summer was mildly triggered not only by Winter’s curt response to her playful message, but also because Winter had mentioned Spring, who again as you may guess, is the personification of spring.

Summer goes from tsundere (see the last line in the previous screenshot) to melancholy.

We quickly gather that Summer has a crush on Winter, who is a boy. Spring is a girl and Summer is suspicious that she gets along too well with Winter. We also learn that Autumn is a guy but he and Summer have a fraternal relationship. Note that the only characters who have dialogue are Summer, Winter, and Mother Nature (Mother Nature does not have a sprite).

Mother Nature makes an appearance but has no sprite.

The bulk of the story involves Summer working through her romantic feelings before eventually winding back (cleverly, I will add) to the themes introduced in the opening narration.

The text is presented NVL style, overlaying the sprites and backgrounds – which is unusual, albeit not unprecedented, for OELVN Ren’Py projects. There is a semi-transparent text box for the text reminiscent of a freeware Japanese visual novel I reviewed, A Dream of Summer.

According to the novel’s credits, the script was written by Zun Yi. In evaluating the script – I note as a threshold matter that this is not an ambitious piece, but rather it was intended to be a humorous little story book-ended by a deep set-up and concluding punchline. The script struggles when it tries to wax poetic – the quasi-philosophical opening scene does not read well. There are a couple points where the identity of the speaker is not obvious. Summer is mostly charming and easy-to-follow, save for it being unclear on my first reading how she became initially acquainted with the image of a Christmas rose. The script is clear with respect to Summer’s internal romantic conflict. As some commenters in the Lemma Soft forum thread noted, the novel has clear Japanese visual novel influences which appear in the rare use of “-chan” and the word tsundere, not to mention Summer laughing like a Japanese visual novel character. To the script’s credit, in the end it delivers the punchline the story is built around well enough.

The object of Summer's affection in his room.

The character sprites were handled by BEERINGS. Summer and Winter are the only characters with sprites. The have a distinct anime-style, but I venture that most people who have seen enough Japanese and OLEVNs would guess they were from a non-Japanese piece. That is not a note on quality, however – both of the sprites are well above what I would expect from this sort of production. Summer is well-drawn and thought went into making her design evocative of summer. She has two poses, with the second pose not appearing until late in the novel – meaning most of her expressiveness is in her face. Winter is just as well-drawn with white/silver hair (a la a certain more-recent anime character I wrote about) and a snazzy winter scarf (where can I get one of those?). There are two instances where the novel uses a semi-transparent Summer or Winter against a background, both of which work reasonably well. The backgrounds were drawn by Collette Ren – the novel technically has five backgrounds, but two are stock photos (Christmas rose and the sky). The vast majority of the novel uses Summer’s and Winter’s rooms as backdrops. Summer appears to live in some sort of tree house. While the tree house is a solid background in and of itself, it does not strike me as being as being as obviously estival as Summer herself. Winter’s home is made of silver, white, and gray-blue, with a snow-flake-pattern window. While it gives off a more hibernal air than Summer's home makes me think of summer, it made me think of an Arctic lair or something of the sort. The background quality is solid but I think Summer’s home should have been a little bit brighter and Winter’s more like a home.

The novel uses stock music for all of its tracks. The main menu theme is surprisingly somber. It reminded me of the winter theme in the most seasonally-sensitive video game I have played, Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, which matches winter but does not match the tone of the novel. A couple of the in-novel tracks were surprisingly subdued for what is, in the end, a lighthearted piece. They are all good quality for a freeware music section, but I do not think they all fit the piece.

Conclusion

For what it is, Christmas Rose is a fun little novel. The team had a clear idea of what it wanted to accomplish and created a short piece to deliver a specific joke in the end. Granting some of my critiques of how well the backgrounds fit, the artwork is ultimately high quality for this sort of piece – certainly better than your typical ten minute freeware Ren’Py production. There are moments when the writing is clunky and, strong artwork aside, where the aesthetics do not fully mesh, but Christmas Rose is still a model project for small teams looking to work together to produce a short visual novel. It does not bite off more than it can chew, focuses on accompanying the story with a solid presentation, and ultimately feels like a finished piece.

Christmas Rose comes with a standard slate of options. Note I did not test it with a controller so I am not sure how well that works.

Christmas Rose is not among the must read novels I have reviewed or one I would recommend for all audiences. However, for those of you with an interest in small indie visual novel projects or who find the concept as I described it amusing, it is easy to download and run and as good a way as many to spend 10-15 minutes.

Final take-away: Seasons are fickle things (or folks).

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Brooklyn Heights Promenade Christmas Tree

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Sharing with readers the annual Brooklyn Heights Promenade Christmas Tree.

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The Brooklyn Heights Promenade sits atop the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and overlooks Brooklyn Bridge Park below, with a clear view over the East River to the Manhattan Skyline, as you can see in my article on an unexpected September 2024 fireworks show seen from the Promenade. The Promenade is about one-third of a mile long and has multiple entrances. For some time now, a large Christmas Tree has been erected annually at the Montague Street entrance to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. I always liked the tree, but I think I took it for granted – evinced by the fact that I have documented in these pages Christmas trees in Metro Tech and Grand Army Plaza, not to mention a live perennial Christmas Tree in Carroll Gardens, but not previously the one at the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. (I did however once write about a dead Christmas Tree in Brooklyn Heights about one block away from where the Promenade Tree goes up every year.) I now correct this four-Christmas New Leaf Journal oversight with a photo I took of the Promenade Christmas Tree on December 17, 2024:

They did a nice job this year. In addition to the tall, hardy looking tree, we also have a mailbox, presumably for letters to Santa Claus if the “NORTH POLE” is any indication, and a Menorah contributed by the Chabad of Brooklyn Heights, which is situated a few minutes away on Remsen Street. It occurred to me that while the sign on the Menorah says clearly who was responsible for placing it at the Montague entrance to the Promenade, I was not sure who was responsible for the tree. Some research was in order.

According to an article on Brooklyn Heights Parents, the Christmas Tree, which is apparently officially called a holiday tree, comes from the Brooklyn Heights Garden Club. The article noted that there was a tree lighting ceremony on December 18 and that “[t]he tree will be lit at 5:30pm on Wednesday, December 18…” I did a double take when I read the date since I took the photo on December 17, 2024, but I suppose the ceremony was not the first lighting of the tree.

(Note: I learned additionally that the Grand Army Plaza Christmas Tree and nativity scene which I photographed and included with my December 2021 review article is maintained by the Diocese of Brooklyn.)

I will conclude by noting that one of the Christmas Trees referenced in the Heights Parents article – the “Seaport Holiday Tree” across the East River in Manhattan – is actually easily visible from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, although it did not occur to me to take a photograph on the same day I captured the Promenade Christmas Tree.

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Our “Safe” Norton Safeweb Rating

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If we define having made it as receiving a green "Safe" checkmark from Norton Safeweb, I dare say that The New Leaf Journal has finally made it.

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On October 18, 2022, I wrote two articles about free products offered by Norton, which is best known for its antivirus products and recently for dabbling in turning customers into crypto miners before shuttering that undeniably innovative program. I reviewed Norton Safe Search, a Norton-powered search tool. While I had no interest in adding Norton Safe Search to my own list of search tools, my curiosity was sparked when I noticed that it drew results from ask.com search, which is unusual (the majority of search front-ends use Bing’s index with a minority relying on Google’s). Of course, Norton Safe Search’s selling point is not where its results come from (ultimately Google since ask.com uses Google’s index), but instead the Safe functionality. Results come with Norton Safeweb ratings, so while I was in the area, I wrote a side post on how to write a browser custom search shortcut for Norton Safeweb.

My Norton Safe Search review became unexpectedly popular, gaining views throughout 2023 and celebrating its 13-month anniversary with a dominant showing in taking the top-ranking in our November 2023 ranking. The review was not done being popular – it sits in second place in our overall 2024 ranking, trailing only a cycling article which received a huge Hacker News bump. If that were not enough, it took the first-place view ranking in June, September, October, and November in 2024 and, barring some unexpected event, will easily claim the title of “most visited article of 2024 which did not make Hacker News page one.”

I have never figured out why the Norton review is popular (admittedly “popular” by our growing-but-modest standards). I doubt that most Norton customers have ever used Safe Search on purpose, and the only reason I know it exists is because it showed up in my referrer logs once. I suspect that people search for other Norton things on Google and my Norton Safe Search article appears on occasion. Its autumnal success could be tied to some Norton Black Friday sales, but its second best month in terms of total page views in 2024 (behind November) was February – so who knows?

But I digress.

In my review of Norton Safe Search, I identified two flaws with the Norton Safe Web ratings that appeared next to results. Firstly, the safe web ratings did not appear next to ad results. I opined, and maintain, that this shortcoming somewhat defeats the purpose of Norton Safe Search since many searchers may not immediately distinguish between ad and organic results. Secondly, and more personally, our humble online writing magazine came with a question mark. That is right – we did not have a “Safe Web” rating.

This screenshot is from my 2022 article. Note that our result on the top has a gray question mark instead of a green check for the Norton Safeweb rating.

I felt a little bit sad. Not sad enough to figure out if it was possible to obtain Norton approval, but sad in the sense that this thing is out there and I did not have it.

It has been two years since I checked to see whether we had a Norton Safeweb checkmark (I tried to run a domain-specific Norton search a few months ago, but discovered that it did not have this functionality). I decided to check again.

Note the green checkmarks next to the two New Leaf Journal links.

Look at that! We have a green check mark now.

Norton Safeweb has indeed confirmed that The New Leaf Journal is SAFE. I did not have to do a single thing.

You can see the live link and an archived capture from December 19, 2024.

What does this mean for us? Not much – our humble website does not run third-party scripts (save for a Gravatar Webmention/comment sneaking through on occasion) or ask for any information from you. I dare say we were less dangerous than most of the green checkmarks from the start. But all jokes aside, my understanding is that the Norton suite is popular, especially in Windows land (whether it should be is beyond our scope). I like collecting things like green checkmarks for the site (the X checkmark is too expensive). I suppose the Norton fans among the reader-base can now feel extra reassured when visiting that we have the Norton seal of not being an evil dangerous website that will infect your computer and steal all of your personal information.

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It is December 2024. That means it is time to publish some "additional" anime awards for 2023. (That is not supposed to make sense, this is a very late article.)

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I have published Anime Year-End Review articles for 2021, 2022, and 2023. In those articles, I ranked my six (or five in the case of 2021) favorite anime series of the year and then doled out category awards for Writing, Aesthetics, Female Character, Male Character, Episode, and Opening/Ending Sequence. In 2022, I published an additional list of minor category awards, prompted by a year-end review post by blogger Guardian Enzo. In my 2023 review article, I stated that I would do the same. I then proceeded to forget about my plan. Forgotten no longer, I now present my Additional Best of 2023 in Anime Awards in the same format as my 2022 list. While it is admittedly odd to publish this article that I had procrastinated on within only a few short weeks of publishing my 2024 anime review, I plan to reference back to the 2023 awards in the 2024 article, so it must be done.

Better late than never and all.

(Or so I tell myself.)

Note before reading that this article is intended to complement my main anime 2023 anime year-end review article, so I strongly recommend skimming (if not reading) that first. This article presupposes familiarity with the full year-end review.

A Note on 2024

Speaking of 2024, we will note need an “Additional Best of 2024 in Anime Awards” list because my 2024 anime review will come in two parts, with one being an overall anime ranking and the second being category awards – a format which will allow me to expand on both sections in what I hope will be interesting ways.

Eligible Shows For 2023

But this article is not about 2024. It is limited only to those anime seasons which concluded in 2023 – as I explained in my main 2023 review article. For example, I will consider the first seasons of Oshi no Ko and The Dangers in My Heart here since they aired in their entirety in 2023, but not their respective second seasons, which aired in 2024. I will not consider Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End or The Apothecary Diaries because, despite having started in October 2023, both seasons ran into 2024 and will thus be considered 2024 shows instead of 2023 shows.

The Extra Category Awards For 2023

Best Song

Winner: Mix (Haru no Oto – Ending Song 1)

In 2022, I restricted my consideration of songs to opening and ending songs. I will go the same route this year and tab Haru no Oto, which was used for the first ending sequence for Mix. Mix’s first-ending was my runner-up pick for best opening/ending sequence of the year (perhaps unsurprising since I wrote about it while it aired), losing out to My Clueless First Friend’s ending on account of the latter’s near perfect animation choices. I will separately give Oshi no Ko the nod for having the best in-episode song – Full Moon in episode 9 performed by Megumi Hanas my female character of the year, Kana Arima. Kana’s in-episode music video is also my choice for the best scene in anime of 2023.

Best Soundtrack

Winner: BanG Dream! It’s MyGo!!!!!

My fourth ranked show of 2023, BanG Dream! It’s MyGo!!!!!, is a band show. It had a soundtrack and live performances that lived up to the billing and it earns my mod for best anime soundtrack of 2024 over Oshi no Ko.

Best original screenplay

Winner: Overtake!

This category refers to original anime, that is anime not based on extant source material such as a novel or manga. My 2023 anime of the year, Overtake!, is an entirely original production with an original screenplay. It was also my choice for best writing of 2023. Overtake! is the easy choice here.

Best adapted screenplay

Winner: Insomniacs After School

Oshi no Ko was my anime of the year runner-up behind Overtake, and it is a manga adaptation. However, while it was number two on my anime of the year ranking, it came in third on my best writing ranking – where it swapped places from the overall list with my second runner-up for anime of the year, Insomniacs After School. I stand by my judgment from the writing award category – Oshi no Ko’s first season has just enough issues, notably its handling of its final episode, for me to give the best adapted screenplay nod to Insomniacs After School.

Best art direction

Winner: BanG Dream! It’s MyGo!!!!!

While a fully CG anime like BanG Dream! is an unlikely candidate to secure my best-aesthetics award, the medium presents some interesting tools to play with in crafting interesting cinematography. BanG Dream! It’s MyGo!!!!! excelled in this area, most notably in its excellent choice to show us episode three through a third-person perspective. My first runner-up is Skip and Loafer – a very pretty and well-framed manga adaptation. Oshi no Ko, which is certainly the best show overall in terms of visuals, takes the bronze in this category.

Best animation

Winner: Oshi no Ko

I interpret the animation category as pertaining to dynamism in the direction and how well the characters move – thus distinguishing it from both art direction, above, and my aesthetics category. But these differences do not lead to a different result than my aesthetics category – the high budget and usually-dynamic Oshi no Ko takes the nod over Tsurune: The Linking Shot and the second season of Vinland Saga.

Best character design

Winner: Undead Murder Farce

I had to think about this award a bit since none of the best aesthetics shows moved me with regard to character design specifically. After reflection, I decided that Undead Murder Farce, with its fun takes on everything from ogres to Sherlock Holmes, had the most memorable character designs of 2023.

Best supporting actress

Winner: Oshi no Ko (Manaka Iwami, voicing Akane Kurokawa)

I wrote about Ms. Manaka Iwami for her starring role in The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten and specifically for her in-character performance for the show’s ending song. While Ms. Iwami will not win any of my minor awards for her excellent work in that show, she will for her supporting role as the up-and-coming actress and very struggling dating show contestant, Akane Kurokawa in Oshi no Ko.

I will add a fun note here. In my article on Ms. Iwami’s ending song performance in The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten, I compared her rendition of the ending song to the rendition of the same song in the first season of Teasing Master Takagi-san by voice actress Rie Takahashi. Ms. Takahashi plays a slightly bigger role in the first season of Oshi no Ko as Ai Hoshino. I will note – as anyone who watches Oshi no Ko will know – that there is an interesting thread connecting the characters of Akane and Ai and their voices.

Best supporting actor

Winner: Overtake! (Taku Yashiro, voicing Toshiki Tokumaru)

Tomumaru is one of the two main rivals to the the co-protagonist racecare driver of Overtake! Mr. Yashiro did a terrific job delivering a surly-but-sometimes-endearing take on the cantankerous and insecure Tokumaru.

Best actress

Winner: Oshi no Ko (Megumi Han, voicing Kana Arima)

Kana (voiced by Ms. Han), on the right, with Ruby Hoshino, left, clutching her hand.

This category presented what may have been my most difficult choice of the article. Ms. Mayumi Sako gave a mature and at times appropriately anguished performance as the enslaved Anheid in Vinland Saga. Youmiya Hina delivered a very different performance as the painfully shy and awkward middle school student, Tomori Takamatsu, who also happened to be the lead singer of a ragtag band while dabbling in poetry jams. I dare say both of these would be year-winning performances more often than not, but I must give the nod to Megumi Han for her performance as my selection for best female character of 2024, Kana Arima in Oshi no Ko. Not only is Ms. Han consistently top-notch in playing a cynical, jaded, but ultimately kind struggling former child actress, and she gives voice to the finest anime scene of the year in an in-show music video I referenced in the best song section.

Best actor

Winner: Undead Murder Farce (Tauki Yashiro, voicing Tsugaru Shin’uchi)

While I had to think about the best actress category – the best actor category had a clear winner. It was a good year for Mr. Taku Yashiro. Before he delivered my best supporting actor performance as Tokumaru in Overtake!, he delivered the best overall voice acting performance of the year as the always-funny half-man/half-ogre Tsugaru Shin’uchi in Undead Murder Farce.

Best director

Winner: Ei Aoki – Overtake!

When my anime of the year selection is an entirely original production, its director is more often than not going to be in the driver’s seat (pun intended in this case) for my anime of the year nod. 2023 finds itself in the often instead of not category – Director of the Year goes to Ei Aoki for his work on Overtake!

Best romance

Winner: The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten

Every romance begins with an umbrella. (While most romances do not begin under umbrellas, the one in Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten most certainly did.)

After my 2022 ranking was headed by two romantic comedies, only one of my top-six shows in 2024, third-place Insomniacs After School, was centered on a budding romance. But while it is a romance, the show I think of when I think of romance in 2023 is the last show outside my top-six shows of the year, The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten.

Best comedy

Winner: Undead Murder Farce

Just as 2022 was a stronger year than 2023 for romance, it was also better for comedies. No show in my top-six would be first described as a comedy, but fourth-place finisher Undead Murder Farce was for me the most comedic show, in its sometimes dark humorous moments, of the year.

Best drama

Winner: Vinland Saga

The two main characters of Vinland Saga season 2 take a break from the drama.

I decided to interpret best drama as the show with the actual best drama as opposed to the best show that is neither primarily a romance or comedy. With that definition, the clear choice is my sixth-place finisher for anime of the year, the second season of Vinland Saga, which was the most edge-of-your-seat show of the year – and perhaps the most bleak.

Conclusion

This wraps up my very late extra awards category for 2023. Some of the parity in choices reflects the fact that 2023 lacked a single great anime – I do not consider either of the shows in contention for anime of the year in the end, Overtake! and the first season of Oshi no Ko, to really be anime of the year caliber productions. On the flip-side, the second season of Vinland Saga was a strong sixth place show, so we had a weaker winner than 2021 or 2022 but a stronger tail-end of the top six than either of those years.

I have not fully settled on all of the categories I will include in my new-format 2024 review, but readers should expect to see a good number of the categories listed above (or slight variations thereof) included in that upcoming post.

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I share 54 things I learned in 2024, with links to sources for each thing I learned. End your year by learning what I learned.

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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.

Fact 1: I see nothing in this photograph other than three fact-loving owls.

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

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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)]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Google shut down AdSense accounts in Russia in August 2024. I thought that happened years ago… [Danilo_Venon for AlternativeTo]

The oldest known platypus is 24-years old. [Christian Thorsberg for Smithsonian Magazine]

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]

Thanks to Julius Caesar, Rome had a 15-month, 445-day year. [Martha Henriques for BBC]

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]

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]

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]

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]

“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]

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]

Breakdancing is (or was) an Olympic sport. [Dodai Stewart and Talya Minsberg for The New York Times]

“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]

YouTube TV (I am not entirely sure what it is) is very expensive – going up to $82.99 on December 12, 2024. [AlternativeTo]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Qatar is now a participant in the Visa Waiver Program. In related news – I have a headache. [Elizabeth Jacobs for Center for Immigration Studies]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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)]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Russia sent 447 goats to North Korea as part of a series of agreements. 432 goats were female and 15 were male. [EUToday]

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]

In 2008, Starbucks determined that the strong smell of its breakfast food was hurting coffee sales and reversed course. [Forbes]

“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]

Chinese intelligence services are using Linkedin to recruit foreign academics – not really a surprise but still interesting. [Aneta Zachova for EURACTIV Czechia]

Zambia set 18 as the minimum age for all marriages. [Hanibal Goltom for Global Legal Monitor]

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]

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]

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]

There’s some debate as to where to draw the line between a “ruby” and a “pink sapphire.” [International Gem Society]

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).

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Sell by November Cashew Milk in December

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I was about to add a carton of on-sale Silk cashew milk to my shopping basket on December 12, 2024 before I noticed that the sell-by date was November 2, 2024.

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My first full article in The New Leaf Journal covered the story of a certain incident which occurred on December 12, 2018. I purchased a Chobani Flips yogurt at a Brooklyn grocery store. When I arrived home with said yogurt, I discovered that the yogurt container – which had separate compartments for the yogurt and crunchy toppings – was missing the crunchy toppings. How did I miss what was missing? Someone had carefully peeled the top of the crunchy compartment without disturbing the yogurt, removed the crunchies, and then smoothed out the top to make it look as if all was well.

Now let us skip ahead exactly six years later – to December 12, 2024.

At about 6:10 P.M. on the 12th of December, 2024, I arrived at the same grocery store at which I had purchased the ill-fated Chobani Flips yogurt. I needed a few things – but only one of the things I needed had to be purchased that day. It was Thursday. This grocery store has new sales every Friday, meaning that Thursday was the last day for that week’s sales. Earlier in the week when I was buying whole milk for coffee, I noted that there was a two-for-seven sale on Silk non-dairy milk. I like almond and cashew milk for drinks (not tea and coffee, however, those demand real milk) and cereal – and to be sure, the store had in stock both almond and cashew milk. I had my eye on the unsweetened cashew milk, but I decided that I would purchase it later in the week, after I had finished my outstanding unsweetened almond milk.

After adding everything but the cashew milk to my basket, I reached the Silk milk section. There were still many cartons of unsweetened cashew milk. I planned to purchase two. None of the grocery stores I frequent have a tendency to have items that are past the sell-by or expiration date available for purchase, although there have been some occasions where the date is a little bit too close for comfort. The reason I know this is because I always check the date before spending money on things. Had I been as good about checking the foil on packages of Chobani Flips yogurt, my first New Leaf Journal article would have been very different from what it was. But I digress.

I looked for the date on the Silk cashew milk carton. I figured that there would be nothing to worry about – the nut milks tend to have use-by dates well off into the future. Finally, I found the date. What was the date?

11/02/24

I did a double take. Some of our non-American readers (hello foreigners!) may be wondering why I did a double date. Us Americans like the mm/dd yy way of writing dates. With that in mind, I note that the sell-by date on the cashew milk was November 2, 2024. Had I been looking at the date in August or September, this would not have been a problem. I suppose that October would have been context-dependent. But it was neither August, September, nor October, nor was it even November.

It was December 12, 2024.

Exactly six years to the day after I had inadvertently bought half a Chobani Flips yogurt, my designs on a nice carton of unsweetened cashew milk were thwarted by a sell-by date more than a month in the rear-view mirror. History may not repeat, but it rhymes.

(Aside: The Chobani Flips, which are visible from the Cashew milk area with a 2-to-3-’o-clock head turn, were on sale. But sale these days is $1.50 instead of $1.00. Yogurt inflation.)

Fortunately, my past-its-prime cashew milk story had a quicker good ending than my Chobani Flips story. In 2018, I had to return to the grocery store to receive a yogurt refund. In 2024, I avoided purchasing the aged cashew milk, so no return trip or refund was needed.

After confirming that every carton of Silk cashew milk had seen its best days in storage, I opted for a carton of regular almond milk, also on sale. I prefer non-sweetened, but at least the almond milk is good for the rest of 2024.

The Silk almond milk in my fridge. Photograph taken on December 12, 2024.

The cashew milk was not the worst case of pushing shelf life past its limits that I encountered. I recall sometime in the last year or two, I encountered a yogurt at a different grocery store that was in the neighborhood of two months past its shelf life. That one I reported. In the case of the cashew milk, I did not encounter anyone to report it to through my checkout, but I hope that someone notices when he or she removes the sale sign.

Now let us skip ahead a few days. I wrote the foregoing on the evening of December 12, 2024. In the course of writing my article, I wrote that the date on the cashew milk was 02/11/24. Now when I say “evening,” I mean that I drafted that first part of the article close to midnight and after I had done other work in the interim. I had most likely just written the cashew milk date wrong. But still, I was concerned that maybe I made made a mistake that evening. Because this is an honest website, I could not publish the article without double-checking my work. On December 15, 2024, I returned to that same grocery store to check in on the new sales (there were not many, unfortunately) and to reassess the cashew milk situation. The Silk non-dairy milk sale was gone, but the cashew milk was not. What was the date on the cashew milk?

The Silk cashew milk at the grocery store (NOT in my fridge) on December 15, 2024. I first saw it at the store on December 12. The fraying top of the carton suggests that it spent too much time in cold storage.

While my having been correct was bad news for the grocery store, it was good news for me. I like this article – especially its poetic call-back to my first New Leaf Journal post. I would have been sad if I could not publish it. There were more managers milling around on the 15th than there were on the 12th, so my Mom reported the cashew milk to an understandably troubled manager while I checked out. The manager proceeded to remove the cartons, which were understandably not selling like hotcakes in any event. Let us hope that in the future the grocery store remembers to put the cashew milk out for sale before its sell-by date.

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I question whether Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko needs a hairstylist given my ocular assessment of his current hair styling needs.

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I read a December 7, 2024 report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) titled Lukashenko’s Hidden Circle: The People Behind the Power. “Lukashenko” refers to long-time Belarusian president – many would with good reason say “dictator” – Alexander Lukashenko. Mr. Lukashenko and Belarus have previously made a few cameos in these pages and related publications. I once made reference to a 2017 speech by Mr. Lukashenko that lasted for 7 hours and 20 minutes, and I more recently discussed his military’s concerns that Pokémon GO is a tool of Western intelligence. Speaking of concerns about intelligence services (real or imagined), I shared with readers in the 170th edition of our humble newsletter a story about Mr. Lukashenko’s intelligence agencies using an online pornography performer as a spy.

But let us return to the link which began this article. The opening paragraph of the OCCRP report immediately caught my attention:

The Belarusian Buro Media, in cooperation with Cyberpartisans and the Belarusian Investigative Alliance, has identified the so far anonymous members of Lukashenko’s inner circle - from chefs and hairstylists to personal physicians - who have been maintaining the president’s carefully curated image while reaping the rewards of their proximity to power.

To be more accurate – one specific part of this paragraph caught my attention. Let us narrow our focus:

has identified the so far anonymous members of Lukashenko’s inner circle – from chefs and hairstylists to personal physicians…

Close – but let us narrow it further.

members of Lukashenko’s inner circle – from … hairstylists…

Right there. “Hairstylists.” Now I present for you 2024 photograph of His Excellency, President Alexander Lukashenko:

Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Far be it from me to tell Mr. Lukashenko what to do. In light of the fact that I can only think of one world leader whose directives are sometimes heeded by Mr. Lukashenko, I dare venture that Mr. Lukashenko is not likely to take advice from small website webmasters in the United States. But does he really need a hairstylist? I do not mean to poke at what may be a sensitive subject, but he does not have much hair. My friend correctly noted that the top of his head is very shiny, but that does not suggest that he is in dire need of a hairstylist of the caliber of Ms. Sniazhana Motsnaya. I refer to the article:

Even the president’s hairstylist, Sniazhana Motsnaya, has risen to prominence, enjoying perks like a luxury apartment. Originally from Lukashenko’s hometown of Shklov, Motsnaya embodies the intimate trust placed in those who manage his public appearance.

To be sure, Mr. Lukashenko has at times sported what appears to be a very well-done combover (as far as combovers go), but I think there are more fiscally responsible ways to attend to his hair. Perhaps a hairstylist was needed earlier in his tenure as president, but those days are in the past. Emomali Rahmon he is not.

Mr. Lukashenko (left) and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin (right) in 1997.
RIA Novosti archive, image #141088 / Vladimir Rodionov / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

With my concerns about Mr. Lukashenko’s hairstylist now on record – I will submit that Mr. Lukashenko’s entourage – at least according to the OCCRP report, does not seem to be as extravagantly compensated as one might expect from the fact of the existence of the report itself and Mr. Lukashenko’s broad authority to do whatever it is he wants within the confines of Belarus. Is $3,000 a month for his personal celebrity chef who was, according to the report, once praised by former French President François Hollande, unreasonable? That seems fair to me. Impressing the French President is not a good credential in and of itself. But one must suspect that French presidents such as Mr. Hollande (you should follow the link) eat well. Impressing the President of France seems like a good credential for a chef. The report then notes that one of Mr. Lukashenko’s personal physicians, Ms. Alena Kazak, is a “reanimation specialist” who has a “modest official salary” but nevertheless has seen her career benefit from proximity to Mr. Lukashenko. But say what one will, Mr. Luakshenko looks healthy given his age (68) and the stress (much of it could have been avoided, granted) of being president of a country facing challenges such as unrest related to questionable election practices, economic sanctions, and its powerful neighbor and sometimes-patron starting a massive land war on right across the border. Whatever his reanimation specialist is doing, it seems to be working – especially since Mr. Lukashenko has also proven that he is an elite hockey and tennis practitioner and plays at least two hours of sports every day. I submit additionally that he appears to be well-fed, perhaps a little bit too well-fed if we compare recent photos to photos from earlier in his presidency – so who could blame Belarusian TV viewers from tuning into a show featuring his chef?

But I digress. I conclude by regrettably bringing up another mystery when we still have not figured out exactly what it is Mr. Lukashenko’s traveling hairstylist is attending to these days. Why does Mr. Lukashenko keep giving interviews to BBC? Does he just enjoy arguing? We must leave that mystery for another day.

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mpv Media Player’s December Santa Hat

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After several years of using mpv Media Player, I only just discovered that the logo wears a Santa hat in December. This led to a brief GitHub investigation.

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Many (if not most) New Leaf Journal readers will know that I run Linux on all of my computers. I use the XFCE desktop environment on my main workstation. There are a number of ways that I can search for and launch applications, but my default method is triggering the XFCE Whisker menu, which is bound to super+space. Once I pull up Whisker, I search for the application I want. Unfortunately, I sometimes pick the wrong application (not my first such error). On December 10, 2024, I pulled up Whisker and typed “m” to search for an application (probably Mullvad). I inadvertently opened mpv Media Player.

For those not in the know, mpv is a minimal and free and open source media player. It is my default media player and I also use it to stream online videos. However, I almost always launch mpv from the command line or from my file manager by opening a media file (note: all of my recent Living for the Day After Tomorrow screenshots were captured from mpv Media Player). Thus, I almost never see mpv Media Player without something actually playing. I was greeted by a surprise when I saw the blank mpv window.

The mpv logo is wearing a Santa hat. I approve of this development. I have previously written about Santa hats seen in the wild, but never in a reasonably popular free and open source media player. Not having previously noticed that mpv has a festive side, I decided to look into the Santa hat matter. Fortunately, it is easy to figure out the mystery behind the mpv Santa hat since mpv’s source code is available on GitHub.

Firstly, I found a GitHub issue from 2019 which appears to detail the addition of the Santa hat to the program. We also see where the code was merged. Now I am no coder, but it seems obvious to me from the description and the code in the commit that mpv checks whether it is December and, if it is December, adds a Santa hat to the logo. The Santa hat appears by default, but it can be disabled. How does one disable mpv festivity? Anti-Santa hat users can change the “greenandgrumpy” value from false to true in the osc.rst configuration file, which includes many settings for mpv’s optional (but enabled by default) on screen controller.

The Santa hat was added to mpv before I first used the application 3-4 years ago, but I did not notice it until now. Count me in favor of the festive flourish. I will also take the opportunity to recommend mpv, which is available cross-platform. The official Wiki and FAQ provide additional information about using and making the most of mpv Media Player.

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Suspected murderer Luigi Mangione allegedly confided in his landlord about his struggles with physical intimacy due to chronic back pain. I raise important questions about landlord-tenant relationships these days.

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In my day job as an immigration law legal research specialist, I contributed work to a case wherein the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) was calling into question the bona fides of a marriage between a U.S. citizen and an alien. The Service did its own investigation into the matter and, based on that investigation, decided to revoke the previously approved marriage petition. Some of the Service’s concerns were stronger than others. One of the weaker concerns goes something like this. The U.S. citizen lived apart from the alien due to their work circumstances. USCIS investigators contacted the person who was the U.S. citizen’s landlord at the time. The landlord believed that the U.S. citizen was in a romantic relationship with another individual who stayed over at the U.S. citizen’s house on occasion (both the U.S. citizen and the alien insisted that the man was a mutual friend of the couple). The USCIS unequivocally took the view that the landlord would obviously have knowledge of the tenant’s romantic relationship status. The U.S. citizen reasonably countered that there existed a normal landlord-tenant relationship and that the landlord had no knowledge of the U.S. citizen’s personal affairs. Now without getting into the claim as a whole – the U.S. citizen’s counter to that specific allegation was entirely fair. Outside of cases where a landlord is renting to a married couple, I do not think it follows from the existence of a landlord-tenant relationship that the landlord knows about his or her tenant's romantic entanglements. In fact, I will venture that most landlords and tenants are more concerned with whether the other side is upholding the terms of the pertinent lease, not their relationship status. I dare say that many tenants may consider undue interest from a landlord in their romantic entanglements to be something of a red flag.

Or so I thought until I read a December 10, 2024 report by Ronny Reyes for the New York Post titled Luigi Mangione’s back pain was so intense that he couldn’t be ‘physically intimate’ with anyone, former landlord says.

Public Domain image of a woman suffering from back pain courtesy of Openclipart (user anarres).

What in the world? I quote from the article:

RJ Martin, who owns the ‘co-living’ space in Hawaii where Mangione lived for six months, said the murder suspect revealed to him that he was in constant pain over a pinched nerve and ‘misaligned spine,’ the New York Times reported. ‘He knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn’t possible,’ Martin told the outlet. ‘I remember him telling me that, and my heart just breaks.’

Mr. Mangione is of course the gentleman charged with the murder Brian Thompson, who was then the CEO of UnitedHealth Group and who leaves behind a wife and two children – before evading authorities for several days after the murder. While all those criminally charged are entitled to the presumption of innocence, I do suspect that Mr. Mangione’s case may be undercut by the contents of the so-called manifesto he was carrying at the time of his arrest – I describe it as a so-called manifesto because a couple of pages of scribbles hardly matches my mental image of a manifesto.

But I digress. Let us return to the original prompt for this article.

According to Mr. Mangione’s former landlord, Mr. Martin, Mr. Mangione had confided in Mr. Martin that he was suffering from severe back pain. I suppose that makes sense. Assuming arguendo that Mr. Martin’s account is accurate, I suspect that there would have been obvious signs that Mr. Mangione was suffering from back pain, thus making the back pain an obvious topic of conversation. But according to Mr. Martin, their conversations about the back pain went further – and by further we mean that Mr. Mangione had complained that he was unable to be “physically intimate” because of his back. Would most people talk to their landlords about how their back makes it difficult or impossible for them to be “physically intimate”? I would not think so – but Mr. Mangione is a bit younger than me, so “O tempora! O mores!” and all.

In any event – while Mr. Mangione may have been in too much pain to be physically intimate during his stay at Mr. Martin’s “co-living” space in Hawaii, he would have had to have recovered decently well assuming arguendo that, as alleged, he made his way to New York City, staked out and murdered a man after months of planning, and then avoided arrest until he was found while dining at a McDonald’s in a different state several days later. Had he done something in New York other than allegedly murdering an unarmed man by shooting him in the back, it could have been an inspiring recovery story – assuming arguendo that his former landlord has accurately represented their past conversations.

(PS: Can I call this article a manifesto?)

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Reviewing the none-too-busy month that was at The New Leaf Journal in November 2023.

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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.

I took this photograph of the BQE and Manhattan Skyline from Grace Court in Brooklyn Heights on November 20, 2024. You can enjoy an older photo post taken about 30 seconds away from where I took this one.

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.

NOV
Rank

Article

3-MO
Rank

1

An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search
N.A. Ferrell. October 18, 2022.

1
(+0)

2

Broken Optical Audio Cable Door "Fix"
N.A. Ferrell. September 16, 2023.

2
(+1)

3

The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei
N.A. Ferrell. March 14, 2021.

4
(+0)

4

Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships
N.A. Ferrell. July 9, 2024.

11
(NEW)

5

Fixing Refresh Rate Issue on 4K TV Monitor
N.A. Ferrell. July 26, 2024.

18
(NEW)

6

Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013)
N.A. Ferrell. July 5, 2021.

5
(+1)

7

Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2
N.A. Ferrell. November 5, 2023.

3
(-1)

8

A Sign of Affection - Anime Review
N.A. Ferrell. March 28, 2024.

7
(+0)

9

Dragonair Safari in Pokémon Yellow
N.A. Ferrell. October 5, 2023.

9
(+2)

10

The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis
N.A. Ferrell. January 18, 2022.

6
(+2)

11

Installing LineageOS on a 2013 Nexus 7 (Wi-Fi)
N.A. Ferrell. July 28, 2021.

12
(-2)

12

Height differences in anime romances
N.A. Ferrell. March 22, 2023.

10
(-1)

13

Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021)
N.A. Ferrell. November 28, 2021.

8
(-3)

14

My Logitech Washable Wired Keyboard K310
N.A. Ferrell. January 20, 2024.

13
(-1)

15

The Story of Billy Possum, President Hoover's Pet Opossum
N.A. Ferrell. November 30, 2021.

X

16

LoveChoice Visual Novel Review
N.A. Ferrell. February 9, 2021.

24
(NEW)

17

Yuki's Hair Color in A Sign of Affection
N.A. Ferrell. February 2, 2024.

19
(-2)

18

Iroha Isshiki's Hair is Brown, as Expected?
N.A. Ferrell. February 12, 2021.

21
(NEW)

19

Installing Non-Listed Programs in PlayOnLinux
N.A. Ferrell. July 8, 2023.

17
(+1)

20

Reviewing FrogFind: A Search Engine For Vintage Computers
N.A. Ferrell. July 24, 2022.

23
(+1)

21

Ghostwriter Markdown Editor Review
N.A. Ferrell. October 7, 2021.

22
(-1)

22

The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten - Anime Review
N.A. Ferrell. March 30, 2023.

X
(*20)

23

Installing GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel 6a
N.A. Ferrell. May 15, 2023.

16
(-1)

24

How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name
N.A. Ferrell. March 11, 2021.

X

X

The Last Nintendo Wii Games
N.A. Ferrell. August 1, 2023.

14
(-1)

X

The Nice Boat: A Look Back at the School Days Anime
N.A. Ferrell. May 6, 2021.

15
(-1)

X

Grafting a Bird's Head Cane Handle Onto a Wooden Umbrella
Victor V. Gurbo. June 8, 2021.

20
(-1)

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.

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Musing About Tesla Cybertruck at Brooklyn Bridge Park

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After documenting an unexpected Tesla Cybertruck sighting in scenic Brooklyn Bridge Park, I thought about what the Cybertruck reminds me of. I thought back to Virtua Racing Deluxe for the Sega 32X.

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The Tesla “Cybertruck” is a vehicle in possession of a distinctive appearance if nothing else. Setting aside whether this distinction is good distinction (indicators of its commercial viability are mixed), it is mostly on account of said distinction that I distinctly recall seeing four, and exactly four, Cybertrucks in the wild in Brooklyn (two black, one silver, and one some shade of green). On November 14, 2024, I happened across the third Cybertruck I saw in Brooklyn, parked in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Of all the places I would expect to find a Cybertruck, Brooklyn Bridge Park is not high on the list. Regular readers may see that the Cybertruck’s unexpected appearance in this scene is not the only reason I took and published the photo. In the background you can see two boats docked by Pier 6 that I have published full articles about: the Victory Chimes and the Alfred E. Smith. But while I invite you to read by articles about those boats by following the links, let us return to the Cybertruck.

Just five days before I encountered the Cybertruck of Brooklyn Bridge Park, I read an article by Ted Gioia on his blog titled Why Is the Tesla Cybertruck So Depressingly Ugly? The article makes for good reading and cites to John Ruskin, which draws my approval. But instead of engaging with the broader points on contemporary aesthetics addressed by Mr. Goia in the post (“the Cybertruck tells us much about the corruption of aesthetics in our time”) or with his comparing the design of the Cybertruck unfavorably to that of the in-progress Sagrada Familia Cathedral, I will note these excerpts from Mr. Gioia’s negative opinion of the Cybertruck itself:

It resembles “nothing less than a militia tank for some imminent civil war.”

“[T]he Cybertruck looks like it was designed by a third grader with a pen and ruler–who spent about three minutes drawing straight lines on the back of a homework assignment.”

“What is it? Maybe a shipping crate? A garbage dumpster? A coffin from Dracula’s castle?”

“It has about as much emotional warmth as a battering ram or piece of sheet metal–both of which it resembles, by the way.”

“[T]he Cybertruck replaces beauty with power. This car wants to look intimidating to outsiders, like a bully strutting on the playground.”

These are humorous and interesting takes. For whatever it is worth, I do not think it represents a tank, although if we start seeing Cybertrucks show up in Syria or Cybertruck technicals in Africa, I will revise my opinion. I will confess to being mildly triggered by Mr. Gioia’s suggestion that it looks like it was designed by a third grader because it suggests that third graders are more capable of drawing straight lines than I am (true, but some things are best left unsaid). I agree in full that the Cybertruck is devoid of emotional warmth, but I am not sure it “replaces beauty with power” because it looks as if it will crumple neatly on when push comes to shove. I suspect the whole thing is some kind of joke, albeit I am not sure how many Cybertruck owners are in on the joke.

But let us focus on Mr. Gioia’s comparisons for the Cybertruck. He suggests it resembles a shipping crate, garbage dumpster, coffin from Dracula’s castle, battering ram, or piece of sheet metal. These are all interesting suggestions. But I have a different thought.

As I noted in an article about a classic Electronic Gaming Monthly April Fools joke, I owned a Sega 32X back in the mid-1990s. For those not in the know, the now-30 year old 32X was an ill-fated video game console which plugged into the far more successful Sega Genesis’ cartridge slot and protruded from the Genesis like a mushroom (despite plugging into the Genesis’ cartridge slot, it needed its own power brick without replacing the Genesis’ power brick). Once set up, the 32X cartridge slot accommodated Sega Genesis game and Sega 32X games. The 32X boasted a significant power upgrade to its host, albeit it still failed in large part because it paled in comparison to comtemporaries in the Sony PlayStation, Sega’s own Sega Saturn, and subsequently the Nintendo 64. But I did not play any of those more powerful consoles until after the 32X, so the 32X represented my first meaningful encounter with 3D video games.

I did not have a complete library of 32X games, but I distinctly remember that my first two cartridges were Virtua Racing Deluxe and and Star Wars Arcade. Both of which are very distinctly early 3D games of the 1990s – where the models are blocky and you can make out the rough edges of every polygon. At the risk of dating myself, the first thing I thought when I found myself face-to-face with the sheet metal of the Cybertruck was Virtua Racing. For example, see this screenshot of an in-game stock car in Virtua Racing Deluxe (archived version) on Moby Games. The sharp, not-too-smooth polygons give it a sort of Tesla Cybertruck vibe. For whatever it is worth, the handling of polygons is very similar in Star Wars Arcade, but the X-Wings and Y-Wings do not remind me as much of the Cybertruck as do the vehicles in Virtua Racing. This YouTube “long-play” video gives you a great look at the Cybertruck’s 1994 predecessor in action (make sure to see the most Cybertruck-like prototype race starting here).

Thus, allow me to throw my theory into the ring – the Tesla Cybertruck is a car from an early-to-mid 1990s 3D racing game inserted into the 3D world in the 2020s. I dare say it could be straight out of Virtua Racing. My Tesla Cybertruck theories aside, you can learn more about Virtua Racing Deluxe for the 32X in a 2008(!?) IGN Review and 2012 review up Super Adventures in Gaming.

(PS: While I never had an Atari Jaguar, I have seen enough screenshots of Jaguar games to lead me to suspect that the Jaguar may have some better Cybertruck inspiration candidates than the 32X.)