Introduction Prior to the start of the 2026 NBA Finals, I published NBA Finals Appearance Droughts, which was inspired by the Eastern Conference (and now NBA) champion New York Knicks making their first NBA Finals appearance since 1999, and Playoff Success of 8.5+ Regular Season SRS NBA Teams, which was inspired by...

The Challenge of Finding Backlinks I recently stumbled upon blog posts by Herbert Lui (How to find people who link to your blog) and Maddy Miller (I wish reply articles worked better; see also my reply post) discussing some of the challenges in engaging in website-to-website discussions. Both blog posts noted that...

Back in 2016-17, I started kicking around ideas for a name and associated domain for what would become this perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. In so doing, I only checked for the availability of various domain names. One of my ideas was The Emu Café, but .com was taken (that of course...

On May 22, 2020, within one month of launching The New Leaf Journal, I published my first investigative expose: The Downed Stop Sign in Vinegar Hill. One report on a fallen street sign led to others. I subsequently covered two downed Stop Signs in Brooklyn Heights, a downed Truck Route sign between Brooklyn Heights...

May Intro While The New Leaf Journal’s birthday falls on April 27, I like to consider May this project’s birthday month. That was part of why most of our sixth birthday celebration this year fell in May. With May now in the books, let us review the month that was at The New Leaf Journal and related projects. May at...

On May 30, 2026, the San Antonio Spurs won game seven of the Western Conference Finals on the road to advance to the franchise’s first NBA Finals since 2014. I just published an article on NBA Finals Droughts, which was inspired more by the 2025-26 Eastern Conference Champion New York Knicks making their first NBA...

Last year, I was inspired to write an article about NBA championship droughts after the Oklahoma City Thunder won the 2024-25 NBA Championship, snapping a franchise-long drought that went back to their Seattle SuperSonics days in the 1978-79 season. But I had the idea for that article before the Thunder won the...

Our Prompt: AI Replacements On May 28, 2026, Sixth Tone published a report by He Qitong titled He Quit Baidu. But First He Had to Build an AI Version of Himself. You can think of Baidu as China’s internal answer to Google, with “Google” meaning the broader suite of Google products and services, not only the search...

Introducing Our Sixth Birthday Project Conclusion I celebrated The New Leaf Journal’s sixth birthday on April 27, 2026, by starting a sixth birthday project wherein I would share on a schedule six articles featuring my blogging wisdom in the month of May. I have already published five “wisdom” articles, so today’s...

On May 22, 2026, TechCrunch published an article by Ivan Mehta titled Spotify’s AI bet: more of everything, less of what you want. I preface my thoughts by noting that I have never used Spotify—or is it now SpotifAI?—and nothing I have read or heard about it, including Mr. Mehta’s article, has made me think that I...

Blogging Wisdom Project Part V Introduction We are reaching the end of my six-part “blogging wisdom” project in celebration of The New Leaf Journal’s sixth birthday. For our penultimate entry, I will tackle a subject which has the potential to nip a potential blog in the bud (a fitting way of phrasing the matter for...

Introduction I share all of my New Leaf Journal articles to my Mastodon account (@nafnlj@linuxrocks.online) using a WordPress plugin called Share on Mastodon. See what my most recent post (before this one) looks like on my Mastodon profile: See the post on Mastodon. The fediverse:creator Tag Note the “More from...