The last blog post of the year is always a good time to look back at the stats to see what was hot (or what was not). Let’s just say that it was a strange year.

First off, this blog hit its 10-year publication milestone this past July. I continue to amaze myself that I have not run out of things to say by now. Unless I already have and all of you are just being polite. I will, however, believe otherwise until one of you just comes out and says it.

This is where I would normally start my lists of top posts for the year, but something has been affecting my stats and I am not sure what to make of it. From an auspicious beginning in 2015 that saw 1,182 page views for the year, growth in traffic has been steady. Until last year, which saw a jump in page views from 28,893 in 2023 to a near doubling in 2024 to 48,523. Most of those views were from the U.S., Canada, the UK and western Europe, and more from other English-speaking countries around the globe. The 158 page views from China was not nearly as interesting to me as the one I got from Vatican City.

And what about this year? I expected a bump in page views from my 26-week addition of a second weekly post devoted to (mostly) classic car photos representing letters from A to Z. But would you believe that page views in 2025 (with over a week to go) are currently 443,190? That is nearly a 10x jump. And around 386,000 of those are from China. After monthly page views between 4 and 5,000, they jumped to around 27,000 in September and October, and the last two months have come in at north of 175,000 views each. The number of visitors shows a similar pattern, with big jumps starting in August and huge numbers that have been a six-fold increase from typical monthly figures before August. Almost all of this growth is (again) from China.

As you might guess, I am trying to figure out what to make of this. My first (and most cynical) explanation is that this blog has been getting Hoovered by Chinese AI projects. This would be a little annoying, but then maybe it is a good thing that Chinese AI might think just a little bit more like I do than it otherwise might. Maybe I need to write an anti Peoples Republic of China screed and see what happens.

There might be something else afoot, although WordPress’s chatbot says that so long as I am not willy-nilly allowing new commenters I should be OK. Of course, WP’s chatbot is powered by AI, so maybe they are all in league with each other. My comment policy requires my manual approval of comments from first-time commenters, and I always check to see if a new commenter I do not know appears linked to a bona fide blog before I approve. If any of you readers have any better ideas, I am all ears. (To any Chinese readers, this is just an old expression. I am not literally made of ears.)

Of course, maybe I am simply big in China. Though this is hard to imagine because I know nobody there and speak not a whit of the language. Other than occasionally eating Chinese food (OK, and buying lots of stuff made there from places like Amazon) I have no connection to the place.

With that out of the way, let us move on to my (now anticlimactic) top 5 most viewed posts of 2025. They are:

5. It’s Hot – And I Hate It (June 6, 2025, 1,875 views) about the author’s disdain for summer’s heat.

4. When The World I Recognize Briefly Reappears (March 21, 2025, 1,914 views) about a lifetime warranty that actually helped me.

3. PB&J, Wherein The Author Indulges in a Simple Pleasure (May 23, 2025, 1,922 views), telling you all you wanted to know about the origins of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

2. How Now Black Cow (August 1, 2025, 2,199 views), in which I extolled the merits of the root beer float.

And (ta-da) the most popular post of the year (by far, with 14,892 views) was Pop Music and Memories (January 26, 2025), which was my reactions on listening to an online oldies radio station. I should note that 1,045 of those views occurred in November and 13k were in December, so I suspect that the Chinese thing is a big factor here.

If we go by the top 5 posts of all time, they look like this:

5. Girl Power In Classic Jazz (October 1, 2021, 3,977 views), a sampling of vintage jazz records where the women tell their guys where they stand.

4. French Burnt Peanuts And Other Disappointments of Life (August 7, 2015, 4,701 views), a perennial top performer about the best candy in the whole, wide world.

3. Let’s Have A Block Party (April 7, 2023, 5,164 views) in which I examined a long obsolete building material.

2. Shakin’ It Up – With Pudding? (July 23, 2021, 5,399 views) about a stupid but briefly successful snack food.

And in first place (again) is Pop Music and Memories (January 26, 2025, 14,892 views).

For this blog, 2025 is now in the books and it is time to start thinking about new topics for 2026. And maybe one of those buttons that allows people to donate. But written in Chinese.

Best wishes to all of my readers for a great new year!