Hello from 30,000 feet over one of the Great Lakes. I'll let you guess which one. I'm winging home after spending a few days in the United Kingdom, a place with a long history of renaming well-established places for arbitrary reasons.

I can't say what I was up to out there, except to say that, per usual, I was looking at some cars. More on that in a few weeks' time.

Lots of publications since the last time I pulled one of these together, so let's dive in!

Look at that adorable pooch. I mean, come on. I know I'm biased, but Koopa is proving to be a pretty great model for these dog-related pieces I've been lucky enough to do for The Filter over at The Guardian. The latest is on finding the best dog bed and, spoiler alert, that's the one pictured above. Koopa liked that thing so much that when I tried to put it away so that he could try out the other beds, he'd go stubbornly drag it back out again. Naturally, it would be one of the most expensive, but there are more affordable options in the roundup.

Next up is my first review of a five-motor EV. I've driven EVs with one, two, three, and even four motors, but never one with five. That it happens to be a lawnmower is just part of the story. It also has a cute little dumper bed on the back, which I've already been using to haul cut wood and other random stuff around the property. At something approaching $9,000, this was a substantial investment, but I'm two months in now and no buyer's remorse yet.

That actually wasn't the most substantial purchase made at the Stevens household of late. After about 12 months of fretting, we decided to stay true to the EV that's been hauling us all over the Northeast over the past three years. It's our faithful 2024 BMW iX, now with 30,000 miles on the clock and still delivering 350+ miles on a charge. The original EPA rating? 307. Yeah, that's wild. You can read the full report over on InsideEVs, putting a bit of a bow on the long-term series I started when we first got the thing.

I sadly don't get to do as many car reviews these days as I'd like. With AI drinking everyone's collective milkshakes, there's just not so much call for that kind of content. So, I'm very happy whenever I get the chance, and one of the most recent was of the Toyota 4Runner in Hybrid trim. More importantly, it's in Heritage Blue, which is readily among my favorite production colors of the moment.

Okay, folks, that's all for now. My flight has now crossed the aforementioned lake and is now over a state that used to be called New Netherland before the English came and conquered and named it after the Duke of York. Of course, it had plenty of names before then, too. Oh, what a long, sordid history we have of renaming of things by petty people..

Next week I'm off to Italy to see some cars drive themselves rather quickly around one of the world's greatest race tracks. Spoiler alert: there will be tears -- if only the ones I shed over Senna's memorial.

Thanks for reading as ever. Be well and do good.