mariposa grove

Atlas Obscura gives us a fine introduction to the life and extensive portfolio of Uruguayan-born cartoonist and cowboy Joseph “Jo” Jacinto Mora (*1876 - †1947) who lived among the Navajo and Hopi and shared his experiences of California in multiple formats.
During his most productive period, Mora and his family resided at the large art colony in Carmel-by-the-Sea but had an established his talent at art schools in New York and Boston and in several Massachusetts publications. An avid writer, photographer, sculptor and muralist, Mora solidified his reputation as the “Renaissance Man of the West” and we found his series of highly detailed and sometimes idiosyncratic maps and charts (here’s quite another topographic depiction of the Golden State)—commissions of Works Projects Administration—to be particularly appealing celebrations of the grand and quirky and encouraged us to learn more about his wide-range of works.

full frequency range recordings

As a fund-raising event for English Heritage—the caretaker foundation for hundreds of historic sites across England, disc-jockey and record-producer Paul Oakenfold will be allowed to hold an intimate concert next month for an invited audience of fifty at Stonehenge. Known for hosting events in exotic venues, Oakenfold will be the first musician to perform at the location—at least in modern times, researchers having studied the acoustic properties and recreated the soundscapes of Stonehenge as it would have been in ancient times recently.

brand new roman

Hyperallegic directs our attention to a font face from the studios of Hello Velocity whose characters are all corporate logos—which by all aesthetic rights should result in something garish and obnoxious, but somehow they’ve managed not to create a typeface that’s perhaps not perfectly legible, still draws one in. Challenging us to parse pervasive sponsorship, I guess the appeal lies in our ability to recognise the logos out of context and underscores the power of careful graphic design and marketing.

type 57

Last week, we were taken for a test drive in a porcelain Bugatti called L’Or Blanc (White Gold) and now we are given a demonstration of another fully-functional Bugatti model—a Chiron supercar—that was almost entirely built from LEGO Technics pieces, over a million assembled by hand.
The car is a legacy brand first founded by Ettore Bugatti in the city of Molsheim in 1909 that produced a line of high performance luxury and racing automobiles through the 1950s when the company went bankrupt and the factory acquisitioned for the aviation industry. Bugatti saw a comeback in the 1990s when the name and distinctive chassis style saw a revival, with Volkswagen engineering the Chiron, two-seated sports car, which was revealed for the first time at the Geneva Motor Show in 2016. See footage of both cars in action at the links above.

annuario pontificio

If you haven’t already done so, do yourself a favour and do give a listen to the Pontifacts podcast. A slightly irreverent romp through all the popes from Paul to Francis with indulgences on offer, each episode gives a biographical, hagiographical overview of each of the Vicars of Christ and some studied explanations of Church hierarchy (from the Greek for president of sacred rites) and other developments in catechism and rates them in the style of another one in our play-list, the Rex Factor.

c+c music factory

Found at The Awesomer, a group of researchers at the University of California’s Berkeley campus have created software for the motion retargeting of video subjects which can—most importantly—transpose dance moves from the source to target. Though the output is not has a few glitches and is not perfectly rotoscoped, it’s really remarkable that the process is nearly instantaneous with no special sensors or studio required.