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My Sister in Law sent me a few pics. This one was from February 1981... My Mom looks so young! The only one's left are myself (blondy), and my oldest Brother, to the left of me. I miss that blonde guy. He could walk into gay bar and turn some heads.

Just purchased a MacBook Air M4 24GB 512GB to replace my 2020 MacBook Pro M1 8GB RAM 256GB. It'll be nice to have more RAM.

Simple Minds - New Gold Dream (81/82/83/84)

Looks like the new 007 is inbound, here is the logo for the Fujiya Avic show in July: and Stax just dropped this: New headband with swivel function but the top of the 007 mounting plate there.

@Craig Sawyers posted the lyrics of this eerily prophetic 1982 track in another thread and that made me dig up the video.

RIP Alfred vinyl

https://www.vice.com/en/article/leica-launches-its-first-35mm-film/ 10$ a roll... I'm sure someone here won't buy 510 rolls, use 2-3, hold on to a few for display, and then wait til they're not being sold and sell them for 50-100$/roll in a few years.

Which is a 2-hr follow-up to the amazing 3-hr piece on tariffs in the computer hardware industry below: This piece was big and eye-opening enough that Bloomberg picked it up and brought Steve from GN (aka Tech Jesus) onto their podcast: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-07/the-tariff-buzzsaw-is-coming-for-hardcore-gamers

Welcome to the Great Awakening and what many outside the US/NATO controlled info bubble have been preaching for a long time. Once you've spent some time seeing the world from outside the Western media bubble you'll see that it's very different than the filtered view we get from our corporate overlords. I think you'll enjoy the journey, just be prepared to have a lot of long-held myths and preconceptions shattered.

Yes Brent, we all know that I'm much older than you. Congratulations. You win.

Wow that was overly dramatic and just plain stupid. Please, before you post stupid bullshit, learn to use the interwebz. (Directed at the poster of the link Pars posted, not Chris)

Brendel was my favourite interpreter of Schubert's solo piano music. Check out his Wanderer Fantasy. This is more of a class on Schubert, taught/curated by Brendel: The sun seems so cold here The blossom is withered Life is old And what they say is empty words: I am a stranger everywhere. Totes relatable.

For Alfred - Alfred Brendel was a big part of my early classical journey. Readily available from Columbia House on sale, they had the Phillips and Decca recordings. And since I was in full exploration mode and he recorded things that many people didn't record, I ended up with a pile of his albums. Brahms: Piano Concerto No.1 by Alfred Brendel (1980) https://album.link/fxnrsg7pgznc8 Example: and Beethoven: Für Elise; Eroica Variations, Op.35; 6 Bagatelles Op.126; 6 Ecossaises by Alfred Brendel (1985) https://album.link/v4df2crd6cksf (boy this page pretty much didn't exist) Example: This is an example of recording something that most people don't. People play Für Elise, they use it as an encore, and the audience goes 'awe', but most performers don't recorded it. So like Murray Perahia, Yo-Yo Ma, Michael Tilson Thomas, Vladimir Horowitz, he was a big influence.

You had me at guanciale

Corn and leeks on pizza sounds utterly amazing, I am also going to need to try that now

Got the mole....🤣

Can't remember if this has been posted before.

The big problem is a lot of influential people want a war with Iran. They were all about regime change in Syria. After that happened, that only leaves Iran as the big target. A lot of those "seasoned" diplomats were all for this. Iran fuels a lot of trouble in the region. I have no idea if this is a good or bad move. We all thought we were going to war with them back when the embassy was stormed by radicals back during the Carter administration. After the failed rescue all of us Marines had our seabags packed and ready to go. Who knew 45 years later it would still be like this.

I stayed up later than I should have last night watching news clips about Israel/Iran. It's fascinating what one can learn upon escaping the US corporate media bubble. I heard a fairly insightful take on Benjamin Netanyahu. Bibi is not a long term strategist. He thinks very short term, he's just (A) been in power and in the public eye for decades and (B) gets a continual tongue bath from most US media. Bibi's MO is [impulsively do thing] -> [deal with the ramifications of his previous action by doing another impulsive thing.] The consequences for this pattern (besides regional instability, bloodshed an chaos) is that to stay in power he has had to increasingly align himself with formerly fringe far right elements of the Israeli political landscape. Bibi's prime directive is to stay in power so he can stay out of jail (reminiscent of a certain other political figure, but I digress...) I have read for years that to really get a proper sense of the true positions of Netanyahu and the Likud party in general, find their Hebrew language statements and run them through Google translate. The results paint a very different picture than what he says in English.

RIP Alfred Brendel. https://www.yourclassical.org/story/2025/06/17/npr-alfred-brendel-obituary

RIP Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, an innocent bystander shot and killed while peacekeepers were pursuing someone with an AR-15, at the No Kings rally in Salt Lake City. He was a beloved member of the community, and "dressed" some pretty famous people in the style of his Pacific Islander culture. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/man-killed-no-kings-protest-salt-lake-city-designer-ah-loo-rcna213296?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

RIP Amanda Feilding, the Countess of Wemyss and March (aka Lady Mindbender). Now that’s an unusual life. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/science/amanda-feilding-trepanation-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.PE8.NOMJ.rmoGe_uOtZri&smid=url-share (gift article)