Late last month a pricey, much-anticipated new vinyl edition of Steely Dan’s 1977 album, Aja, began landing with a thump on the doorsteps of eager Danfans throughout the land. The $150 Ultra High-Quality Record (UHQR) consists of a pair of 200-gram 45 rpm LPs pressed on translucent so-called Clarity Vinyl. (“Deacon Blues” is given the entire Side B to luxuriate in its own mythic loserdom.) The release comes individually numbered (the pressing is limited to 30,000) and packaged in a brown slipcase that calls to mind the bookshelf binders that may have once held your dad’s archive of Playboy.

I like to imagine different scenarios playing out, like switching up events and wondering what the outcome would be. It’s like what Quentin Tarantino does with some of his movies. In Inglourious Basterds, he imagined a world where the USA dispatched a wild gang of soldiers to take out Hitler, and they did. In Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, he imagined the night of the Sharon Tate murders going a different way.

I once wrote an article about global trade and mentioned the word TRILLON. Among many positive and interesting comments. But there was only one who corrected me. He told me: trillion has 18 zeros. You've made a mistake! Me: Not necessarily, actually the short scale is 12 zeros. Him: No, you don't understand. It's best with 18 zeros. And so he kept writing the same thing several times because I never replied him again.

Thank you for reading! To help keep The Lost Songs Project going, become a paid subscriber today! Peak: #2 on the Hot 100 Streams: 6.5 million Walking away from a bad relationship gives you a jolt of cleansing anger. It might be a romance turned sour, a job turned terrible, or a friendship gone awry, but whatever the case, it feels great when you decide yo… ncG1vNJzZmikn6jBtLvNoKpnq6WXwLWtwqRlnKedZL1wvsSdZKutkpeys3nBmqOlZaSdsm6v2KuipZ1dpa62uIysoKanng%3D%3D

There are many things that I’ve discovered since I started posting on Instagram back in 2016. The first is that efficient phone charging is essential for a job in social media. It’s a bit like being addicted to smoking when you’ve only got two cigarettes left in the packet - the moment my phone goes below 50%, I’m rushing for the nearest plug point li… ncG1vNJzZmikmaiupa3WrKanZqOqr7TAwJyiZ5ufonyxe8eormasn2Kws7HArZxmmZ5ivK%2B4yKecZqWfpLFurs6aqZ0%3D