HiWire

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

Congrats! Might be worth getting the Linn fixed later as well. My Arcam CD player's tray broke a while ago and Arcam refused to repair it. A local electronic repair shop was able to fix it.

It sounds like a recipe for fun if I ever heard one. I like that Aston has been earning their credentials through racing since their big comeback in the early '00s – taking on established giants like Porsche, Ferrari, and team Corvette, especially in endurance racing, is a tough job for a smaller company. Their cars from the 80s and 90s were kind of like living fossils. TV presenting and production must be lucrative in the UK. That's quite a collection of rare cars that Chris Evans has assembled.

Here's one of my dream cars, peak Aston Martin (the V12 Vantage V600 with 7-speed dogleg manual) – why are the best cars always the rarest?

Is Anna Holmwood the translator? I've been getting around to starting the series, but the books are expensive import editions.