tro breizh

Though the historic tour, the pilgrimage to the shrines of the region’s seven founder saints, might be too ambitious for a few days’ vacation—a grand undertaking with a circuit covering Quimper, Vannes, Dol-de-Bretagne, Saint-Malo, Saint-Brieuc, Tréguier and Saint-Pol-de-Léon—we’ll nonetheless have at least a few of those stops on our itinerary as we at PfRC take a much needed sabbatical in Brittany. Stay tuned for further adventures coming soon. Kenavo ha beaj vat!

a spacex odyssey

Via the Awesomer, Deep Fake artist called ctrl shift face has morphed the visage of entrepreneur Elon Musk onto actor Keir Atwood Dullea playing astronaut David Bowman in this four-minute clip as he confronts the HAL 9000 regarding egress for some pod bay doors. It’s not quite seamless yet and I think we like to grasp onto those glitches as hard as we can but impressive and disturbing, nonetheless with the potentials for the technique clearly illustrated—check out more canny shorts of face-swapping at the links above.

7x7

because internet: a study into how online culture is shaping language

nuuk nuuk: Trump cancels Denmark state reception over Greenland snub

conflagration: São Paulo experiences a daytime blackout as smoke from the burning Amazon rolls in

404 - not found: an abandoned Chinese nuclear model city in the Gobi

jurassic park: undisclosed paleontology site in Nevada will take centuries to sift through—via Kottke’s Quick Links

the vindicator is my only friend: another veteran newspaper shuts down in a reeling blow to social justice

dieu et humanitie: the unexpected gospel of Victor Hugo

fall into the gap

Originally operating as an outlet Levi-Strauss blue jeans, pioneering the wall of denim concept since no retailer had heretofore been able to successful stock popular pants sizes and styles (carrying them all), selling those exclusively along with a selection of record albums and cassette tapes, the first store of the clothing chain The Gap was opened by Donald George and Doris Feigenbaum Fisher on Ocean Avenue in San Francisco on this day in 1969. Due to the limited selection it was originally going to be called Pants and Discs, but the savvy business woman, philanthropist and art collector Fisher suggested that they would reach across the generation gap, appealing to the younger and older demographic.

escalator to nowhere

Having gleaned no lessons learned from other municipalities like Berlin and Barcelona—not to mention the panoply of remorseful cities in the US—who count their decision to open up their thoroughfares among their biggest miscalculations, this week Wiesbaden allowed the installation of e-scooter stations that one can rent via a smartphone platform and abandon anywhere.  It’s not so much the question of liability and the potential for bodily harm to the operator and cross-traffic that bothers me so much but rather the gimmickry of it all, the luring away of people content to walk and take mass-transit otherwise and the greenwashing that belies the considerable infrastructure and how very smart people are lapping it up. “Well sir, there’s nothing on Earth like a genuine, bonafide, electrified six-car monorail. What’d I say?” That’s one way I suppose to get your town on the map.

on the other hand

Permanently exhibited perched atop a Christchurch gallery, Ronnie van Hout’s colossal sculpture Quasi will now dominate the skyline of Wellington, New Zealand for the next three years from the rooftop of the capital’s civic centre, an Art Deco building that was formerly a library.
A reference to Quasimodo the Bellringer, the disembodied hand (see also) has a face that is a toned-down self-portrait, the installation for some has a menacing, vaguely Lovecraftian, body-horror quality to it and it remains unclear whether it becomes re-animated after night falls, and for others the sculpture is endearing (like the loathsome hero that’s its namesake) and a source of civic pride.

kind of blue

Released this week in 1959, Miles Davis’ studio album counts amongst not only the most iconic and influential jazz sessions of all time but the certified quadruple platinum selling record ranks as one of the most important contributions and collaborations of any genre.  Not that the trappings of superlatives and analysis are needed intermediaries we did enjoy listening through the lens of this appreciation from Open Culture that explores the modalities of the sextet‘s performance. We were also pleasantly reminded, via Kottke’s Quick Links, of the chip-tuned tribute from Andy Baio, Kind of Bloop.