You may be wondering why I am publishing a review of the months that were at The New Leaf Journal in May and June of 2025 in the home stretch of August. Many factors contributed to this circumstance. I was busy with work for much of May and went away for a week toward the end of the month. I fell ill soon after returning home and had plenty of non-New Leaf Journal work while I was sick and after I recovered. In light of the fact that I had limited time and energy for New Leaf Journal articles,
I decided to prioritize new articles instead of my May and June reviews, especially due to the relatively small number of new articles I published in those months. I thought about consolidating May and June with July for a three-in-one month-in-review, but I decided against it because I ended up publishing a decent number of new articles in July and listing most-visited article stats for three months would be annoying (two is already not great). Thus, July will get its own review while May and June go together here as we bring July to a close.
New NLJ Leaves From May and June
I published 16 New Leaf Journal articles in May-June, with the third of those articles being about April 2025 at The New Leaf Journal. I also syndicated the 234th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal during what was an article drought (covered here). Below, I sort the other 13 articles into topical categories. As has been my custom since the March 2025 Newsletter, I will offer insight as to how I came to write each of the articles.
Feeds
In Checking Our RSS Service Subscriber Counts in Server Logs, I noted some interesting stats about our feed subscribers and which feed readers people use to follow The New Leaf Journal. I came across this topic while studying our server logs for site performance issues, so you can thank the AI scrapers and bots if you enjoy the piece. Readers FT and Chris responded to my post in our Guestbook. On June 20, 2025, I wrote a guide-of-sorts to using Domain-Specific Google News RSS Feeds. I have subsequently had to append a note that the Google News feeds do have a minor problem.
Sports
On May 2, 2025, I published 2025 Cavaliers’ Record Sweep of the Miami Heat. Things had been looking up for the Cavaliers, which entered the NBA Playoffs as the Eastern Conference’s top seed, after they annihilated the Miami Heat. Of course, as we now know, things quickly went south for the Cavaliers when they were eliminated by the Indiana Pacers in what was a significant upset in the second round of the Eastern Conference Playoffs. I would not have written this particular article had I not covered the Heat in an article prompted by their unusual statistical profile for an NBA playoff team. The Pacers would come up again in my first article of July, but we will have to save the discussion of that one for my upcoming July review.
Photographs From May 4, 2025
I turned three photographs I took on May 4, 2025, into articles. BLOB DYLAN Seen in Williamsburg (May 2025) is the newest entry in my BLOB Dylan series (which began in early 2021). Williamsburg Christmas Tree in May 2025 is based on a photo I took within minutes of BLOB. Foggy Manhattan Skyline (May 4, 2025) is centered on a photo I took later that day. Left unsaid in the first two article is why I was in Williamsburg that day. I had a tuxedo fitting for a friend’s upcoming wedding. All three of these articles referenced earlier photo posts on the same topics and themes, so consider them portals to more NLJ reading.
NYC Commentary
In NYC Open Streets Traffic Cone Shortage, I combined my impressions on a story about alleged traffic cone shortages in New York City with an anecdote. This article includes a photo that I took on May 4, 2025, so it could have also fit in the previous subsection. Unsurprisingly, I took the May 4 photo of a Vanderbilt Street street sign because I had already planned to write the traffic cone article.
I am not a fan of New York City’s primary ranked choice voting system. Instead of writing an op-ed, I tackled the issue through the prism of joke analysis in The Bad Joke of NYC Ranked Choice Voting. This article was inspired by the fact that New York City deemed it necessary to send me a mailer about how to properly do ranked choice voting, notwithstanding the fact that the only race I had to vote in, the Republican primary for Comptroller, had only two candidates.
Reviews
I have published many reviews in The New Leaf Journal. But never before May 19 had I published someone else’s review. I remedied that shortcoming in Sharing Handwritten Review of the Els Pet “Spaceship.” That was not my only cat-related review article of the month. One day later I published Reviewing ANeko Reborn For Android. I reviewed ANeko Reborn on a whim after seeing it on F-Droid. Finally, I wrote about Putting Together Ikea’s DVÄRGTALL Figures, which I suppose could be loosely described as a review. I bought the figures at Ikea because their faces spoke to me, and after seeing that some assembly was required, decided to turn it into an article.
Airports
I noted at the top that I took a vacation in May. My airport travels led to two articles. First, I covered my visit to Houston Hobby Airport with Learning About William P. Hobby at Houston Hobby Airport. My next post covered Houston Hobby and Denver International Airport: Failing to Try Airport Illy Coffee Vending Machine. I have other airport photos that I can turn into articles, but no time frame for doing so.
Other Sites
I only published one new leaf at The Emu Café Social. I received some interesting spam comments on that site from user killer for hire.
I skipped a few newsletters in May and June, but I still published five in total. You will find the links before:
- May 3: Issue 231 – Broomletter
- May 17: Issue 232 – Return of the BLOB
- June 7: Issue 233 – [I forgot to add a title]
- June 14: Issue 234 – Cough
- June 21: Issue 235 – I drafted early, mailed late
In addition to recapping our new articles, each newsletter includes at least 21 links from around the web with commentary. Thus, they all have something for you to read even if you are up to date with NLJ and ECS.
The Old Leaf Journal
I thought it would be fun to revisit some articles from the past — specifically those published in May and June in prior years. I have chosen six articles which bear some relationship to at least one of our 2025 May-June posts.
I published a BLOB DYLAN graffiti article in May 2025. Back in June 2021, I published “King Baby” Graffiti on a Truck in Gowanus. The mysterious KING BABY is actually much more active than BLOB DYLAN in areas I regularly walk.
On June 22, 2023, I published Against camping in ATM vestibules. This commentary was a bit more serious than my recent article about the purported traffic cone shortage in New York City.
On June 29, 2022, I reviewed an English-language visual novel called ACE Academy. My review of Kaori After Story, which is a spin-off game which follows from one of ACE Academy’s paths, will appear below in our monthly ranking articles. The ACE Academy has been strangely less successful than the Kaori After Story review, but it almost made our July top-24.
On May 12, 2024, I wrote about Telling Southwest I’m On Vacation. This was prompted by my taking the same trip to San Antonio in 2024 that I took in 2025.
On May 20, 2020, I wrote about how Boston police employed a novel approach to corralling a run-away bird in Boston Police and Peacock Maintenance.
Finally, on May 23, 2022, I shared a distinctly vernal poem in An 1882 Poem on Apple Blossoms.
Most-turned leaves of May and June
I use a WordPress plugin called Koko Analytics to count page views (Koko Analytics works entirely locally – you can read my 2022 review). Each month, I list the 24 most-visited articles according to Koko Analytics for the month that was and the three month period ending with that month. Because we have two months, I decided to consolidate these lists into a single chart.
| Article Author. Date of Publication. | May Rank | March-May Rank | June Rank | Apr-June Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon “Cargo Bikes” in Brooklyn N.A. Ferrell. April 9, 2025. | 1 | 12 (+47) | 1 | 2 (+10) |
| Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships N.A. Ferrell. July 9, 2024. | 2 | 1 (0) | 3 | 1 (0) |
| Misleading ARRIS Modem Login Instructions N.A. Ferrell. June 12, 2024. | 3 | 9 (+5) | 2 | 3 (+6) |
| Dragonair Safari in Pokémon Yellow N.A. Ferrell. October 5, 2023. | 4 | 2 (+4) | 6 | 4 (-2) |
| Victory Chimes Schooner in Brooklyn Bridge Park N.A. Ferrell. December 5, 2024. | 19 | 21 (+12) | 4 | 10 (+11) |
| How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name N.A. Ferrell. March 11, 2021. | 5 | 10 (+7) | 12 | 5 (+5) |
| Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013) N.A. Ferrell. July 5, 2021. | 11 | 11 (0) | 5 | 9 (+2) |
| The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 – Statistics and Analysis N.A. Ferrell. January 18, 2022 | 6 | 6 (+1) | 7 | 6 (0) |
| Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2 N.A. Ferrell. November 5, 2023. | 7 | 4 (+5) | 9 | 7 (-3) |
| Yuki’s Hair Color in A Sign of Affection N.A. Ferrell. February 2, 2024. | 8 | 16 (+1) | 22 | 15 (+1) |
| Kaori After Story – Visual Novel Review N.A. Ferrell. December 31, 2022. | 23 | 13 (-10) | 8 | 18 (-5) |
| Broken Optical Audio Cable Door “Fix” N.A. Ferrell. September 16, 2023. | 9 | 3 (+2) | 11 | 8 (-5) |
| My Logitech Washable Wired Keyboard K310 N.A. Ferrell. January 20, 2024. | 17 | 17 (-4) | 10 | 14 (+3) |
| Height differences in anime romances N.A. Ferrell. March 22, 2023. | 11 | X | X | 22 (+4) |
| A Sign of Affection – Anime Review N.A. Ferrell. March 28, 2024. | 12 | 23 (-2) | 16 | 21 (+2) |
| An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search N.A. Ferrell. October 18, 2022. | 13 | 7 (-1) | 21 | 11 (-4) |
| Hair Color in Raven of the Inner Palace N.A. Ferrell. November 15, 2023. | 18 | 19 (-3) | 13 | 16 (+3) |
| January 2025 Look at Pixelfed Social N.A. Ferrell. January 29, 2025. | 14 | 5 (-3) | X | 17 (-12) |
| Fixing Refresh Rate Issue on 4K TV Monitor N.A. Ferrell. July 26, 2024. | X | 18 (-6) | 14 | 19 (-1) |
| Hair Color in The Apothecary Diaries Anime N.A. Ferrell. November 15, 2023. | 15 | 14 (+1) | 20 | 12 (+2) |
| The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei N.A. Ferrell. March 14, 2021. | 20 | 15 (-5) | 15 | 13 (+2) |
| Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021) N.A. Ferrell. November 27, 2021. | 16 | 24 (0) | X | X |
| Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search N.A. Ferrell. April 16, 2025. | X | X | 17 | 24 (NEW) |
| Installing LineageOS on a 2013 Nexus 7 (Wi-Fi) N.A. Ferrell. July 28, 2021. | 24 | 20 (+2) | 18 | 20 (+0) |
| Futaba Igarashi’s Hair Is Naturally Green? N.A. Ferrell. November 23, 2021. | X | X | 19 | X |
| Umineko When They Cry Red Truth Guide N.A. Ferrell. December 7, 2022. | 21 | X | X | X |
| 1997 Otis Thorpe trade and the 2003 NBA Draft N.A. Ferrell. June 27, 2023. | 22 | X | X | X |
| Using Web Archives To Get Around CAPTCHAs N.A. Ferrell. August 12, 2022. | X | X | 23 | X |
| Reviewing FrogFind: A Search Engine For Vintage Computers N.A. Ferrell. July 24, 2022. | X | X | 24 | X |
| Calvin Coolidge Describes His Mother, Victoria N.A. Ferrell. March 13, 2021. | X | 8 (-4) | X | X |
| Ghostwriter Markdown Editor Review N.A. Ferrell. October 7, 2021. | X | 22 (-4) | X | X |
April and May were relatively soft months by 2025 standards, although they would have been among our better months of 2024. This softness made it possible for some unusual suspects to make at least one of the monthly rankings.
My April article on Amazon’s e-cargo bikes swept the top spot of the ranking in its first two full months, while Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships held the top spot for the three-month periods ending in May and June. Sorry, I don’t understand the preceding sentence. 2024 and 2025 articles are beginning to dominate the top of our most-viewed article lists, although there are still plenty of high-performing articles from 2021-23 (2020 is unfortunately absent from the May and June rankings).
I cannot make predictions for July since it is now August, but I will note for readers who have not been tracking our weekly ranking notes in the Newsletter that Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search, which came in 17th in June, will be a major protagonist in my July and August review articles.
Conclusion
This wraps up my very late review of the months that were in May and June of 2025. It will be followed in the near future by a slightly less late review of July (which was much busier than May and June) and, with hope, a timely review of August.
