HiWire

Re: the Cocteau Twins – I've owned Milk & Kisses and Heaven or Las Vegas for years, but I've been meaning to check out their earlier albums forever. I'm glad the store that I visited has an eclectic selection. In the House of Strange Affairs – My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult

Visited the music store... got a few discs I'd been wanting: Black Messiah – D'Angelo and the Vanguard Treasure – Cocteau Twins Beat My Distance – Anemone

Here's another favorite of mine, the Lexus LC500. I fell in love with the Lexus LF-LC concept that was shown in 2012, and the production version is pretty close to the concept. I really hope the rumored F Sport version loses literally a ton of weight and adds a manual transmission. https://youtu.be/2NgROUQZNVM

III – The Grassy Knoll One of my favorite bands. This one is more relaxed-sounding than their first two albums. If you enjoyed some of Angelo Badalamenti's jazzier work in David Lynch's projects (Lost Highway, particularly), you might love The Grassy Knoll.

Emoticons are the best! They make up for all the inadequacies of our language:

Sea Change – Beck I need to pick up more of his albums. Odelay is excellent and I've been planning to get Mellow Gold and Mutations forever. Then I'll check out his newer stuff.

Have you watched The Man in the High Castle (Amazon)? I read the book, but haven't watched the show.

We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic – Foxygen I think this album is much better than their 5th album, Hang. The songs have more energy, cohesiveness, and authentic emotion. Also, for Foxygen, this album shows some restraint where their later albums crossed a line somewhere.

City of Thieves by David Benioff (Game of Thrones showrunner) – the adventure of two young men set in the siege of Leningrad, this book has a bit of everything – action, history, literature, the absurdity of war, but most importantly, humor

If you have the budget, I'd look at a refurb 2018 Mac Mini. The RAM is user-upgradeable and you can even hook up an eGPU. The 2014 was handy for a while, but the 2018 is more future-proof (in terms of macOS compatibility cutoffs) with a lot more CPU power, a little more GPU, and the refurbs aren't much more expensive than the 2014, depending on your config. The 2014 Mini should have optical audio out of its headphone jack, unlike the new one. Minis make great always-on boxes, whether you're using them for TV or more general server duties. I can't say the same for iMacs or MacBooks – they aren't designed to be left on all the time.

Thanks, guys. I follow this thread but don't post as I only have a Timex and a Swatch at the moment. The millenials don't seem to wear wrist watches any more.

I'm looking at something fresh for the remainder of the summer:

I never felt bad when the bad guys put bullets into the Aztek (Ass-tech) in Dark Angel.

2016 Atomized – The Raveonettes I've only got Chain Gain of Love and Pretty In Black, so this is a big update for me... the Raveonettes' latest album sounds much more modern, to my ears. A lot of ear candy in this first listen.

I'm not a big fan of streaming TV, and this article will probably date badly in a year, but we appear to be at a crossroads: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/magazine/streaming-race-netflix-hbo-hulu-amazon.html

La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman – follow-up prequel to the Golden Compass trilogy (His Dark Materials) in the new trilogy, The Book of Dust One of the best novels I've read in the last few years – can't wait for the next book to come out. The 2nd book in the trilogy, The Secret Commonwealth, is due this October:

You Don't Mess with the Zohan

It sat on my bookshelf for years – it's a long book, but it's easy to read because Bryson is a great storyteller. Highly recommended.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson – a great science book for non-scientists:

The White Stripes (1999)

The History of Fraggle Rock (my favorite children's show):

I was listening to music from my 2011 MacBook (from my Alessandro MS-1 out of the headphone jack – RIP mini Toslink) – I turned the volume up one click (to 4 out of 16) on a short pop music track and it nearly fried my ears (ow ow ow). Don't underestimate the volume level coming out of modern pop music – going to give my ears a headphone break until tomorrow. ? I think I'll turn the iTunes volume down to 1/2 to reduce loudness with headphones from now on. There are some huge jumps between volume levels on the Grados. I was lulled into complacency after I listened to Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations (Zenph).

Lost (2004), Season 2 – hard to believe so much time has passed

Porsche announced the new 6-cylinder 718 Cayman GT4 and Spyder (with 6-speed manuals) – this might cause the price of the older 981 GT4 to finally drop a little and some of the more conservative owners might take them out of storage: https://www.evo.co.uk/news/22794/the-porsche-718-spyder-and-718-cayman-gt4-are-finally-here