Newsletter Leaf Journal CCXIV 〜 2024 after story
Our first newsletter of 2025 covers many new posts at The New Leaf Journal and The Emu Café Social, including our full 2024 review at NLJ and the start of a new project at ECS. We then move on to 21 exciting links from around the world wide-web, an interesting five most-visited articles of the week at NLJ, and other news and notes.
Happy New Year and welcome to the 214th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, our first mailing in 2025. The Newsletter Leaf Journal is the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. This newsletter comes to you as always from Nicholas A. Ferrell, administrator and editor of both The New Leaf Journal and its short-form writing sister-site, The Emu Café Social. We have plenty to cover in our first newsletter of the new year, so let's get to it.
Leaves from the tree of the week that was
I published three articles since mailing the final newsletter of 2024.
My showcase article of the week is The 81 Most-Visited Articles of 2024. This is my fifth annual year-end review. I list our 81 most-visited articles, starting with 81 and working my way to 1. Each article comes with a link, short summary, and extra notes. The top-12 articles are accompanied by commentary from our resident fictional dialogue duo, Justin and Justina. I believe that this is our second-longest New Leaf Journal article after The Enigmatic Life and Death of Emperor Otho, but it is neatly organized with a table of contents and headings for perusing over more than one sitting. As for the ranking itself, regular followers of our Newsletter Week top-fives will see many familiar articles near the top of the list, but there are a few entries -- especially at the very top of the list -- which may come as surprises for some readers.
I also published our regular December review. While this is overshadowed by the much longer 2024 review, December was an eventful month in and of itself -- our busiest non-Hacker News fueled month on record -- so there is plenty to see there as well (our monthly article ranking saw some new and unfamiliar article faces).
My last article of 2024 was Best Record vs Best Net Rating in 51 NBA Seasons. I noted in earlier NBA statistic articles that net rating is usually a better indicator of team strength than the raw win-loss record. In this article, I decided to look at the playoff success of the teams with the best regular season net ratings and win loss records going back to 1973-74.
Over on The Emu Café Social
I was inspired by my recent 54 Things I Learned in 2024 article on The New Leaf Journal to work on a similar post for 2025. After thinking about the best way to do it, I decided to post on The Emu Café Social one thing that I learn each day over -- granting some things I learn may end up on The New Leaf Journal as well. You can see the first three things I learned posts below:
We are off to an educational start to the year. You can follow the full series here or even via feed (Note: These posts show up in our main ECS feeds so you do not need to subscribe separately of you already follow our feed).
I posted several less educational posts. I added feeds to my GitHub profile page using blog-post-workflow, but I ran into an issue when I used WordPress ATOM feeds instead of RSS feeds. I will write this up as an article soon, but you can see my new GitHub profile page to see how my RSS feeds (including one for this very newsletter) look on it. For any Element messenger users out there, I cited to a good resource in Guide to Using Element Desktop With Two Accounts. I complained about nonsensical unsolicited cooperation offer spam emails and I concurred with a case for transcribing podcasts before assessing them.
Leaves from around the web
Let's check in on the world wide web for the first time in 2025.
2D people
Why the world is so animated about anime (archived)
The Economist. October 11, 2024.
Despite watching anime, I am not on top of what the other people who watch anime are doing. With that being said, my understanding of the types of anime that are most popular in North America leads me to doubt the analysis that foreign audiences are primarily drawn to "fluffy cuteness."
SPOILER FREE SUMMARIZING THE YEAR! 2024
Takafumi at Please no Hate. January 2, 2025.
Look at these enterprising webmasters getting their 2024 anime reviews out before I do. I cited to Takafumi in my article about the excellent anime cinematography in Days With My Stepsister. He chose Days With My Stepsister as his favorite anime of 2024 (I will not do the same). There is one award, or should I say anti-award, that I may agree with Takafumi on: "Worst cast: Yoru no Kurage wa Oyogenai," otherwise known as Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night, which I covered in the context of hair color. Of course in my case, that would be worst cast in the context of shows that I watched from beginning-to-end. I don't have the same patience for irritating anime that I used to.
A story told through two articles, three years apart
Making Sense of SADAT, Turkey’s Private Military Company
Matt Powers for War on the Rocks. October 8, 2021.
I suppose that they proved that they are more effective than a certain other "private military company" known to have operated in Syria since this interesting report was published in 2021.
Putin Chose Ukraine Over Syria
Alexander Baunov for Foreign Affairs. December 26, 2024.
I would frame it as he chose to prioritize Ukraine over Syria while fully intending to keep Syria. Turkey then took his lunch money and stuffed him in a Syrian locker and shipped the Syrian locker back to Moscow.
Forgotten video games
Sega Admits It Doesn't Know How Many Games It Owns
Damien McFerran for Time Extension. December 28, 2024.
Talk about going above and beyond to make yourself relatable to your customers and fans.
Waste of the Day: The 2008 Recession, The Video Game
Jeremy Portnoy for RealClear Investigations. December 26, 2024.
"The bizarre, government-funded project from 2010 asks players to fire as many virtual employees as possible in a reenactment of the 2008 recession. Once the workers are all replaced by Wall Street bankers, it’s 'Game Over.'"
Astronoka – 1998 Developer Interviews
Shumplations. November 29, 2024.
Translations of two interviews from more than two decades apart with the developers of a 1997 Japan-only game about protecting your garden with traps against creatures that "evolved" based on your traps.
1990s NBA basketball
BBR Mailbag: ’90s Knicks
Neil Paine for Basketball Reference Blog. April 13, 2010.
Looking back at the very good New York Knicks teams of the 1990s.
A 1997-98 NBA on NBC Press Kit
Chris Shorts at Basketball Shorts. November 12, 2024.
Very nostalgic. Aside: It is probably not a great sign for the NBA that the 1997-98 season marked the apex of the league's popularity in the United States, being that it is now 2024 and all.
Semantics
The Grammarphobia Blog: Looking into ‘leaning into’
Grammarphobia. August 19, 2024.
I prefer to lean in to leaning into.
"Advanced Stalking"
Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy. December 23, 2024.
Let's check in on criminal statute nomenclature in Guam.
Recommendations for thee but not for me
Testing the Firefox Alternatives
Tom Morris. September 9, 2024.
While I have my share of problems with Mozilla, I still vote for spending a short amount of time configuring Firefox instead of relying on a fork (LibreWolf does look solid, however).
6 Open-Source Tools for Windows to Enhance Your Frustrating Experience
Ankush Das for It's FOSS. December 12, 2024.
I would use Notepad++ if I had to use Windows.
They seemed to go together
Wikipedia Declares Hamas the Victor in Nearly Every Battle Against Israel Since 10/7—Then Quietly Deletes Section
Adam Kredo for The Washington Free Beacon. January 2, 2025.
That table was profoundly stupid even by the low standards of Wikipedia's editorial leanings.
Hashtags and Hit Lists: Social Media’s Role in Justifying Violence
Colin Wright at Reality's Last Stand. December 23, 2024.
I'm not surprised Bluesky is winning, but this was foreseeable and I use it correctly so I only learn about the theatrics second hand (feel free to follow me at my nifty @naferrell.com account).
Everyone needs a hobby (but some hobbies are more commendable than others)
research as leisure activity
Celine Nguyen for personal canon. May 27, 2024.
I did not feel at leisure when I was fighting WordPress' block editor to format History of New York’s Evacuation Day, but I am known (by whom?) to have written about productive leisure.
The Olympic snowboarder who turned into a vicious and deadly drug kingpin in Mexico
David Amoruso for Gangsters Inc. October 21, 2024.
Would have made more sense for him to become a vicious and deadly drug kingpin where there is more snow.
Foreign commerce
Demand for Starlink in Zimbabwe is overwhelming capacity
Chris Muronzi for Rest of World. December 13, 2024.
Apparently Econet, Telecel, and NetOne are not beloved ISPs. For my part, I am mostly fine with Spectrum. I will stick with my 20% better speeds than advertised.
Amazon and Walmart couldn’t kill India’s mom-and-pop stores. But rapid delivery might
Ananya Bhattacharya and Adnan Bhat for Rest of World. November 12, 2024.
If New York City is any indication, rapid delivery guys on e-bikes and scooters may kill off more than mom-and-pop stores.
On second thought
High-ranking Assembly Member Calls for Aid To Beleaguered State Cannabis Fund Borrowers
Rosalind Adams for The City. December 10, 2024.
Interesting proposal but hear me out on a different idea: Let's not do this.
$850 for a Table at Applebee’s? Welcome to Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
Emmett Lindner for The New York Times. December 31, 2024.
They couldn't welcome me to Times Square on New Year's Eve by offering to give me $850 for a table at Applebee's.
Most-turned leaves of the week
I use a privacy-friendly and entirely local tool called Koko Analytics (see my 2022 review) to track page hits. In each issue of the newsletter, I list our five most-visited articles, according to Koko Analytics, for the one-week period beginning with Saturday and ending with Friday. For each article, I note how many weekly placements it has for the year and all time, which for our weekly ranking goes back to the start of 2021. Because it is a new year, I am resetting the first our yearly-ranking stats for 2025 (I noted some interesting 2024 stats in our previous newsletter).
2025 Newsletter Week 1 Ranking (12-28-24 to 01-03-25)
(1) Kaori After Story – Visual Novel Review
N.A. Ferrell. December 31, 2022.
Historic Stats: 2 appearances and 1 top placement.
(2) Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2
N.A. Ferrell. November 5, 2023.
Historic Stats: 29 appearances and 11 top placements.
(3) An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search
N.A. Ferrell. October 18, 2022.
Historic Stats: 47 appearances and 18 top placements.
(4) Fixing Refresh Rate Issue on 4K TV Monitor
N.A. Ferrell. July 26, 2024.
Historic Stats: 6 appearances and 2 top placements.
(5) Broken Optical Audio Cable Door “Fix”
N.A. Ferrell. September 16, 2023.
Historic Stats: 15 appearances.
Analysis
I noted in my December review and my 2024 year-in-review that my Kaori After Story visual novel review had a big run in the waning days of 2024. It had more views in 2025 Newsletter Week 1 than any has had article since 2024 Newsletter Week 3 -- which was led by Cycling Doping Fallacies in large part thanks to its being shared by a popular newsletter and making Hacker News page 1. The runner-up for 2025 Newsletter Week 1, Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2, had its best-ever week in terms of page views, but it still came up well-short of taking its 12th first-place finish. Taken together, 2025 Newsletter Week 1 was our best week which did not involve an article appearing on the first page of Hacker News, so we are hitting 2025 running (granted we hit 2024 running and then had a slow April-July, so we will see how it goes).
I am not entirely sure what is driving the Kaori After Story surge. I saw that there is a Steam sale for the game, but Steam sales for Kaori After Story are not uncommon and none of its many sales in the previous two years led to this level of performance for my review. While I have my doubts that Kaori can keep up this pace, another week close to this level will would make the review a real threat to secure top marks in the end of the month.
Having noted that I am skeptical about Kaori continuing to pace The New Leaf Journal field, I will note that the previous four articles to lead the first Newsletter Week of the year all finished in the top-five in the year-end most-visited rankings:
- 2025: Kaori After Story - Visual Novel Review
Year End Rank: TBD - 2024: Cycling Doping Fallacies
Year-End Rank: 1 - 2023: Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013)
Year-End Rank: 5 - 2022: The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei
Year-End Rank: 2 - 2021: Persona 4 Golden Digital Artbook Review (Steam)
Year-End Rank: 4
Regardless of what the Kaori After Story does in the upcoming weeks, it made one piece of New Leaf Journal history: It is the first of my many visual novel reviews to secure a first-place weekly finish.
News leaf journal
I am juggling many projects and article ideas, so I plan to sit down and try to order my priorities. In the immediate term, I want to publish my 2024 anime reviews in the next week, but they still require a good amount of work even though I started putting them together last month. I have a number of tech articles I want to get to, but I will avoid naming all of them here since I have not decided which ones to prioritize. I also have a few mostly-finished drafts that I can put the finishing touches on and put up in January. While I am not promising specific articles other than the long-planned 2024 anime review, I think January will end up being a good month.
Taking leaf
Thank you as always for reading and following The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you are not already a regular reader, you can sign up for our weekly email, add our RSS feed to your favorite reader, or simply check in on our newsletter archive page at your leisure (see options). I hope to have a few new articles up and ready to discuss in next week's newsletter.
Until January 10,
Cura ut valeas -- Nicholas A. Ferrell.