STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

SAY HELLO TO THE MINI COOPER FROM HELL

Forget about the news of a tree-hugging electric Mini for a second and feast your eyes on this new little beast to come out of John Cooper Works, Mini’s dedicated performance arm.

The heavily modified car officially named the John Cooper Works GP Concept is a radical version of the road car made specifically for the track. It will also provide a hint of the carmaker’s future performance-oriented lineup including the production version of the Mini John Cooper Works GP.

“If you know about MINI, you’ll be aware of the brand’s long and successful history in motor sports,” said Adrian van Hooydonk, Senior Vice President of BMW Group Design.

“The MINI John Cooper Works GP Concept brings together the full suite of defining MINI design features and showcases them at their sportiest and most exciting.”

So what does a Mini from hell come with?

Whilst the company refrained from releasing details about the powerplant, the current generation JCW Mini boasts a 160kW four-cylinder turbo engine paired to a six-speed manual. Punters can expect to see something more aggressive than this specification.

The body of the car is the most audacious feature with massive carbon fibre fins adorning the car to ensure optimal airflow and downforce at speed. The detail even trickles down to the finer racing appointments like a centrally mounted windscreen wiper. Not that you’d notice given the heavily pumped front and rear guards.

The Union Jack LED tail lights are a quirky touch to a serious looking car though.

Speaking of the car’s radical design, BMW Group senior vice president of design, Adrian von Hooydonk, said that “if you know about Mini, you’ll be aware of the brand’s long and successful history in motor sport”.

“The John Cooper Works GP Concept brings together the full suite of defining Mini design elements and showcases them at their sportiest. What we’re looking at here is maximum performance, maximum Mini.”

The Mini John Cooper Works GP Concept will officially debut at this year’s Frankfurt motor show alongside a host of other hotly anticipated models.

[MIKA27]

First ‘Hostiles’ Trailer Reveals Christian Bale in Gorgeous, Gritty Western

Fresh off its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, the first trailer for filmmaker Scott Cooper’s (Black Mass) hardened Western Hostiles has been released online. The film takes place in 1892 and stars Christian Bale as a legendary Army Captain who reluctantly agrees to escort a dying Cheyenne war chief (Wes Studi) and his family back home to the tribal lands. Along the way, they encounter a variety of obstacles.

That premise is simple enough, but in the hands of Scott Cooper nothing’s ever that simple. Cooper has shown a knack for telling almost punishingly gritty stories with films like Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace, and most recently Black Mass, and here he’s applying his talents to a classical Western in the vein of John Ford. This trailer is pretty phenomenal as it shows off the gorgeous yet haunting imagery (shout out to DP Masanobu Takayanagi) and some very, very distraught and troubled characters. Reviews out of Telluride were strong and the indie is about to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it’ll no doubt spark a bidding war to see which studio wants to launch an Oscar campaign for the film and, specifically, Bale’s heralded performance. I can’t wait to get a look myself.

The film also stars Rosamund Pike, Adam Beach, Ben Foster, Jesse Plemons, and Q’orianka Kilcher. Hostiles currently doesn’t have a distributor or release date, but expect that to change very soon, with a likely release date sometime this fall. 

[MIKA27]

KRAUTMOTORS BMW C EVOLUTION E-LISABAD SCOOTER

No, this isn't some new piece of military hardware or a new gadget for an upcoming James Bond film. Despite the looks, the inspiration for this custom BMW C-Evolution electric scooter was a tea set — specifically, builder Rolf Reick's grandmother's 1920s cubic service by Eric Magnussen.

Ideas really do come from the most unexpected of places. Rolf began by removing the plastic body panels, lowering the scooter, and adding rigid struts at the rear. The origami-like front fairing purposely covers only half the frame, leaving the rest of the mechanicals exposed for a raw, industrial look befitting the much-lauded German engineering.

[MIKA27]

THE MACALLAN EDITION NO. 3 WHISKY

The third installment of The Macallan's innovative annual series has arrived. The Macallan Edition No. 3 follows the first two releases in the series which highlighted the influence each cask had on the taste and flavor of the whisky. No. 3 however, makes the aroma the focus thanks to the influence of luxury perfumer Roja Dove. Dove went through a host of whisky samples and described the notes of each to help The Macallan's Master Blender form No. 3.

[MIKA27]

BEATS STUDIO3 WIRELESS HEADPHONES

Beats' Solo line might be more common, but it was the over-ear Studios that got the company started. Beats Studio3 Wireless Headphones bring the model in-line with the rest of the family while adding some new tricks exclusive to the flagship. Most notably, the Studio3s are powered Apple's W1 chip, giving them the same seamless pairing as the AirPods. It also enables their new Pure Adaptive Noise Canceling technology, which auto-calibrates up to 50,000 times per second to block out any unwanted noise and adjust for head movement, fit, and even the shape of your ear. They run for up to 22 hours with Pure ANC enabled or 40 with it off and can get another three hours of juice in just ten minutes of charging. Available in several stylish colors.

[MIKA27]

Insidious: The Last Key Trailer Opens Doors With a Touch

“Be careful, you’re about to touch it,” a paranormal investigator is warned in Universal Pictures’ trailer for Insidious: The Last Key, the fourth film in the Insidious horror franchise. The mystic also has to touch on her own past as she ventures deep into the further to end the evil. She doesn’t have memories, she has scars.

Insidious co-creator Leigh Whannell, who directed Insidious: Chapter Three and wrote the screenplays for the previous three movies in the franchise, wrote the script. Insidious: The Last Key is directed by Adam Robitel (The Taking of Deborah Logan), who is new to the series. The film is produced by Saw and The Conjuring director James Wan.

Lin Shaye reprises her role as Dr. Elise Rainier, who has faced down evils her entire para-professional life, and now has to retrieve the traumas she buried in the basement of her family home.  The supernatural thriller is set years before in the medium’s home town in New Mexico.

Insidious 4 also stars Whannell, Angus Sampson, Josh Stewart, Caitlin Gerard, Kirk Acevedo, Javier Botet, Bruce Davison, Spencer Locke, Tessa Ferrer, Ava Kolker, and Marcus Henderson.

Insidious: The Last Key opens in theaters on January 5, 2018.

[MIKA27]

Curiosity Has Discovered Something That Raises More Questions About Life On Mars

Everyone from David Bowie to astrobiologists to tinfoil hat believers has pondered the question: Is there life on Mars? While we've found direct evidence of liquid water on the Red Planet, we have yet to find any microbes there. But not all hope is lost — new discoveries from NASA's Curiosity rover have brought forth more compelling evidence of habitability on Mars. I mean, in theory, all that life has been dead for billions of years, but still.

Researchers studying Curiosity's data say the rover has detected boron in the 3.8 billion year-old Gale crater. Boron is an element that can catalyse the formation of RNA — or ribonucleic acid, the single-stranded carbon copy of DNA found in all living cells — when dissolved in water. The boron was discovered in calcium sulfate mineral veins suggestive of ancient groundwater, so the team believes this could mean at least some of the water once present in Gale Crater had conditions favourable to the emergence of life. The findings have been published in the Geophysical Research Letters.

"Because borates may play an important role in making RNA — one of the building blocks of life — finding boron on Mars further opens the possibility that life could have once arisen on the planet," the study's lead author, Patrick Gasda, a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, said in a statement. "Borates are one possible bridge from simple organic molecules to RNA. Without RNA, you have no life. The presence of boron tells us that, if organics were present on Mars, these chemical reactions could have occurred."

Hopefully, NASA's 2020 Mars Rover will be able to answer the many lingering questions we have about ancient Martian life. According to Los Alamos National Laboratory, this rover will be specially equipped with a "SuperCam" that can "search for signs of past life" on Mars. (More about that instrument's capabilities here.) Fingers crossed we find something — humanity really needs a win right now.

[MIKA27]

France Wants To Ban All Fossil Fuel Production By 2040

In what would be a world first, the government of President Emmanuel Macron wants to phase out all oil and gas exploration and production in France and its overseas territories by 2040. Sounds dramatic, but the EU nation has very little to lose as it sets its sights on a greener future.

As The New York Times reports, Macron's government will introduce the proposed legislation to the French Cabinet today, with hopes of having the bill passed by the end of the year. The French government is striving to make the country carbon neutral by 2050 by pumping the brakes on greenhouse gas emissions — the primary instigator of human-caused climate change.

Under the new bill, France would no longer issue any exploration permits for oil and gas, and all current allowances would be gradually curbed and phased out over the next 22 years. No shale gas permits would be issued, either for exploration or extraction (as it stands, fracking is currently illegal in France, but the proposed bill takes it further by prohibiting all methods, both current and speculative).

The target year coincides with the country's plan to end the sale of gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2040. The legislation is also in step with the French government's commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement, and its efforts to promote renewable energy. The country is hoping to drop is reliance on nuclear energy to 50 per cent by 2025 from the current 75 per cent.

This bill would be quite historic if it passes, but France is in a very good position to do this right now, and the move is being seen as largely symbolic. Unlike the economies of the United States, Canada, Russia, several Middle Eastern nations and others, France's dependence on fossil fuel extraction is very low. France only produces about six million barrels of hydrocarbons per year, ranking it 71st in the world. Russia, on the other hand, produces 10.5 million barrels each day. What's more, French oil and gas production represents a mere one per cent of its total consumption. France will continue to import and even refine oil after the 2040 deadline.

France's primary oil company, Total, has permission to seek out oil deposits in overseas territories, such as Guyane Maritime in French Guiana. It isn't immediately clear how the pending legislation will affect the company, and it has yet to make a statement about the proposed measure.

Symbolic or not, this move by France should make Big Oil at least a little bit nervous. The future of fossil fuels is starting to look increasingly grim. And hallelujah for that.

[MIKA27]

RARE CELEBRITY SELFIES FROM VINTAGE PHOTO BOOTHS OVER THE YEARS

Before there were cell phones and selfie sticks, there were photo booths. This vintage collection of automatic portraits goes to show that things haven't changed too much; celebrities have been taking selfies for almost a century now!

Rumored to have been invented in 1926 by Siberian immigrant Anatol Josepho, the first photo booth was introduced to the public on Broadway in New York City. The booth promised to preserve your memories for just 25 cents per sheet.

Considering a sheet included 8 shots and cut-out the need for a photographer or processor, the photo booth was a clear upgrade from the cumbersome tradition of studio portraits popular before that.

Not long after its invention, the photo booth became a worldwide phenomenon, eventually reaching the level of popularity we now know it for.

This collection of portraits spans the so-called "golden years" of photo booth history, a period that stretched for the next 50 years after its invention. You'll spot everyone from Elvis to Andy Warhol and even a 12-year-old Marilyn Monroe.

MEL FERRER, AUDREY HEPBURN, TRUMAN CAPOTE

YOUNG MILES DAVIS

18-YEAR-OLD JAMES DEAN

ELVIS PRESLEY

MARGUERITE DURAS

ANDRE BRETON

ANDY WARHOL

RENE MAGRITTE

12-YEAR-OLD MARILYN MONROE

[MIKA27]

Lost Roman City of Neapolis Discovered in Tunisia

In a bit of archeological irony, an ancient city whose name means “New City” has been discovered off the coast of Tunisia, confirming stories that it had been mostly submerged by a 4th century tsunami. The discovery also validated records that this city was the center for making and marketing a famous fish-based fermented condiment.

Quote

“This discovery has allowed us to establish with certainty that Neapolis was a major center for the manufacture of garum and salt fish, probably the largest center in the Roman world. Probably the notables of Neapolis owed their fortune to garum.”

Mounir Fantar is the head of a Tunisian-Italian archaeological mission that has been working since 2010 to identify the underwater ruins off the coast of Nabeul in Tunisia. This summer, divers found the streets and monuments of a 20 hectare area of the city. Most interesting to historians was the discovery of 100 tanks of garum, a product described in the writings of Pliny the Elder as a liquid fermented from fish intestines (anchovies, sprats, sardines, mackerel or tuna) and salt to give a savory taste to the apparently awful cuisines of the time that need a dowsing of fish intestines to be palatable.

How did Neaoplis get lost and why wasn’t it found until now? The original settlement was founded in the 9th century BCE by the Phoenicians but came into its own as a trade port established by the Greeks in the 5th century BCE. “New City” was a common name used by the Greeks – it’s also the root of Naples. Due to various wars, it changed hands from Greek to Carthaginian, Roman and eventually Tunisian rule, where its name was changed to Nabuel. According to historical records, Nabuel was hit by a tsunami on July 21, 365 AD, that destroyed some of the city and submerged the rest. The wave also destroyed part of Alexandria in Egypt the Greek island of Crete.

Will the rediscovery of the lost city of Neapolis create a movement to resurrect garum as a condiment? Let’s hope so. Have you tasted fast food lately?

 

[MIKA27]

‘Gerald’s Game’ Trailer: Kinky Sex Goes Horribly Wrong for Carla Gugino

If you haven’t had your fill yet of Stephen King adaptations from The Dark Tower and IT, you’ve got another one headed your way at the end of the month. Netflix has released the Gerald’s Game trailer. Based on King’s 1992 novel, the story follows Jessie (Carla Gugino), who goes to a secluded cabin with her husband Gerald (Bruce Greenwood). To spice up their sex life, they try a little bondage where Jessie is handcuffed to the bed. However, Gerald has a heart attack and dies while Jessie is still handcuffed, and she must figure out how to survive both physically and mentally.

The movie looks delightfully twisted, and I have no doubt that Gugino, who is far too often relegated to supporting roles, can carry this picture. Additionally, while The Dark Tower and IT have offered some grander scope for King adaptations, I’m excited to see a thriller that’s mostly contained to one room and one character. It should make for a fun, twisted picture, and I’m a bit jealous of folks that will get to see it with a crowd when it plays at Fantastic Fest later this month.

The film hits Netflix on September 29th.

[MIKA27]

‘Daddy’s Home 2’ Gets a New Trailer, Lots More Daddies

A new trailer for Paramount Pictures’ Daddy’s Home 2 has arrived well ahead of its early November release date and its Christmas-themed plot, so, “Happy holidays” I guess? At least this time around the trailer is provided in a more conventional widescreen format and not condensed to a Facebook square like the first one, so there’s much more room for all the daddies to air out their grievances in this comedy sequel.

Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg return as sensitive step-dad Brad Whitaker and badass dad Dusty Mayron respectively, but they’re joined by their own dads in this follow-up to the Sean Anders-directed 2015 hit. Anders returns to direct newcomers John Lithgow, playing the elder Mr. Whitaker, and Mel Gibson as the Mayron grand-patriarch. Not enough dads for you? Don’t worry, there are more to come.

The film also stars Linda Cardellini, John Cena, and Alessandra Ambrosio. Daddy’s Home 2 opens in theaters on November 10th.

[MIKA27]

3D SKULL ICE CUBE TRAY

You can have the right bitters, the best liquor, and top tier spices – but if you don’t put them all together in a compelling manner, your cocktails simply won’t stand out. Instead of letting your drinks settle for second best this fall, try making a bit of a splash with the 3D Skull Ice Cube Tray.

This silicone ice cube tray produces four 2×2.35-inch frozen skulls that are perfect for plopping in your favorite whiskey or cocktail. The mold is made from a BPA-free food and dishwasher safe silicone that is firm enough to shape a realistic skull with fine detail – but can be easily peeled away when it is time to have a cocktail or three. To top it off, the mold comes with a no-risk 100% satisfaction guarantee. Your Halloween punch-bowl just got a lot more interesting.

[MIKA27]

IWC 50TH ANNIVERSARY CERATANIUM AQUATIMER WATCH

To some people, a watch is just a watch. To others, they are a complex works of art that have been perfected over centuries. We fall into the latter group. So, it’s fair to say that we were excited to hear that IWC had created a watch that was the first of its kind in their 50th Anniversary Aquatimer.

What makes this watch special is that its case is crafted from a new material that the brand has dubbed Ceratanium. This hybrid material features the same corrosion resistance and lightweight properties of titanium, as well as the hardness and scratch resistance of ceramic – the best of both worlds. On top of that, this stunning wristwatch features an automatic movement with a 68-hour power reserve, an exhibition case back, an anti-reflective sapphire crystal, and a perpetual calendar and chronograph complications. But it will be extremely limited – only 50 will ever be made – and will only be sold in IWC’s stores at a price of around $52,300.

[MIKA27]

Tennessee’s First Bottled Whiskey Is Back From the Dead

Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery was born in the late 1800s and quickly became the largest producer of sour mash whiskey in the area. Then it was shut down in the early 1900s thanks to a little thing called Prohibition. Tennessee’s oldest bottled whiskey is back from the dead after more than a century thanks to two brothers who happen to be great-great-great grandsons of the original founder, Charles Nelson. The brothers Nelson, operating again as Nelson’s Green Brier, recently launched Nelson’s First 108 Tennessee whiskey, a whiskey named for the 108 years since the original shutdown and the 108 barrels they had aging in the warehouse. Nelson’s First 108 is distilled from the original recipe and mellowed through sugar maple charcoal as part of the Lincoln County Process. The whiskey is available in a green label small batch bottled at 90 proof and a Single Barrel option bottled at cask strength.

[MIKA27]

Bentley Continental GT Rally Edition

From the 24 Hours of Le Mans to the Gumball 3000 you can find bespoke Bentleys in quite a few automotive races across the world. Now you have the opportunity to add a race like Dakar to that list with this auction for the Bentley Continental GT Rally Edition that was inspired by the iconic rally that now takes place in South America. This particular bespoke rally car was originally built as part of the National Geographic show “Supercar Megabuild” (Season 2, Episode 4 if you want to look it up) for a client that wanted to tackle extreme terrain without sacrificing any of the creature comforts you’d expect to find in a vehicle bearing the Bentley badge. The end result is a Mad Max creation of sorts with over $30k in upgrades and modifications that make it suitable for the outback and the outdoors while still allowing you to feel like you’re riding in a private jet. The auction concludes September 9 with bidding currently at just over $50,000. All you need is co-pilot/navigator.

[MIKA27]

SONY WF-1000X WIRELESS EARPHONES

Offering noise canceling, NFC wireless charging, and a ten-foot transmission range, the WF-1000X handles calls and music streaming with ease. The quarter-inch dome drivers provide crisp, clear sound and the built-in batteries allow for three hours of use between charges. Sony's charging case can deliver 75 minutes of playback with only 15 minutes of charging and has the power capacity for two complete charges before it needs to be plugged in. The headphones also come with a slew of in-ear buds to ensure you find the perfect fit.

[MIKA27]

HURRICANE IRMA: A PRACTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE STORM

Hurricane Harvey, which killed 60 people and may end up costing $150 billion, parked over Houston and dumped four feet of rain. The water overwhelmed the sprawling city’s flood control systems. Meteorologists and atmospheric scientists used up their superlatives describing the storm’s size and impact.

They should have saved some.

Hurricane Irma has become the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record, category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale—over 800 miles wide, roughly the size of Texas, sustained winds of over 185 miles per hour for more than 24 hours, gusts over 200 mph—and it has made landfall in the Caribbean. Irma’s storm track, the predicted line of its travel, projects its eye gliding north of the islands of Hispaniola and Cuba starting Thursday, zooming up Florida to Miami late Sunday, and then reaching Georgia and South Carolina the next day.

All hurricanes have a theoretical maximum intensity, a thermodynamic limit on how fast their winds can blow given ocean temperature and atmospheric temperature. Few hurricanes ever actually reach that limit. But as Irma grew and developed, it came very, very close. If Harvey was a perfect storm, Irma is an almost impossible one. “Irma is anomalous,” says Jim Kossin, an atmospheric scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information. “This is a record-breaker. Unprecedented. Catastrophic.”

How did Irma get so powerful? Well.

“Irma had everything going for it,” says Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at MIT who developed the theory behind that theoretical maximum. “The water was warm, the layer of warm water was deep, and there was almost no wind shear, which tends to be very destructive to hurricanes. It can live up to its potential, if you will.”

The most efficient hurricanes stretch from the ocean up to to the bottom of the stratosphere, between 50,000 and 60,000 feet in the tropics. That vertical column lowers the air pressure and the storm gets more powerful. Wind shear knocks down the column, but so far Irma hasn’t run into much.

Will it? That’s tough to predict. Average conditions, as Kossin has written, would predict higher wind shear as Irma approached Florida. But right now the water is warm, and surface temperature doesn’t vary quickly; it’s safe to say Irma will keep that fuel at its feet for some time. “That thermodynamic speed limit in the straits of Florida right now is ridiculously high, a frightening prospect,” Kossin says—maybe more than 200 mph by some calculations. “If a storm spins through there, in the absence of shear it can get really strong.”

Other possibilities could rein Irma in. Direct hits on the variegated topography of Hispaniola and Cuba, for example, might be disastrous for the islands but could mellow the storm. Irma might even behave in a way that lessens its own impact. “If it moves slowly it could churn up the water, actually cooling the water beneath itself, so it has a self-regulating feature,” Kossin says. “We don’t necessarily expect that to happen.”

Irma's consequences could be enormous. Already the small island of Barbuda had at least one death and lost 90 percent of its built structures. Other islands have had at least eight more deaths. Puerto Rico’s electrical power authority is predicting total loss of power for up to six months.

And Florida? Miami has been trying to fight back rising sea level—no storm necessary—for years. Like Houston, it’s a sprawling coastal city with lots of development and lots of people up against the water. Here’s where all the superlatives describing Irma may fall short: The problem for Miami might well be the high winds that the Saffir-Simpson scale measures, because buildings there are meant to withstand 185-mph gusts but not the possible 200-mph blowouts meteorologists are worried about. (No, that wouldn’t make Irma a “category 6” hurricane, because there is no such thing.)

But even worse than that could be the storm surge, ocean water pushed inland on top of the already rising sea. That’s what made Tropical Storm Sandy so problematic for New York. The tide and shape of the coastline have a big effect on storm surge, so its severity with Irma will depend in part on where and when the storm makes landfall.

The worst-case scenario would make Irma a “grey swan,” an event history wouldn’t necessarily predict but science might, as Emanuel and Princeton engineer Ning Lin wrote in an article in Nature Climate Change in 2015. “These are extremes that far exceed previous records but that still are physically possible,” Lin says, “so people do not prepare.”

Sure, of course, people evacuate, or they stock up on provisions and take shelter. They try to adjust building codes. But in general, humans keep building sprawling, low-lying cities on coasts. And in the face of what scientists know about climate change, that’s a very bad idea. “The underlying probabilities of very intense storms are going up,” says Emanuel. "We’ve certainly seen category 5 hurricanes before, but they’re rare. There’s only been three hurricanes that struck the US as category 5, and this, I hope, won’t be the fourth. But it might be.”

Don’t ask whether Irma is more powerful than it would have been without climate change. That’s something researchers will try to unpack after the storm dissipates, once the numbers are in. “At what point do we just say, ‘Yeah, part of this warm ocean and very, very high potential that we’re seeing must be due to the fact that we’re warming the planet?’ It’s always problematic,” Kossin says. “Once again, we’re left with just a probability, or a likelihood, which is always what we’re left with. A storm like this is more likely now than it was 50 years ago.”

In 1990, Harvey would have been a 100-year storm. In today’s climate conditions, Emanuel says, it’s a 15-year storm. Demographics, population increases, and land-use changes made its effects even worse.

Look at it this way: If Godzilla emerged from the ocean and laid waste to Houston, then a week later did the same in the Caribbean, and then attacked Miami with atomic breath, the US government would learn to build giant Godzilla-fighting mech suits lickety-split. “We’ve had two outlier, extreme hurricanes back to back. If that doesn’t raise red flags, I don’t know what would,” Kossin says.

One storm is a problem for FEMA, for Health and Human Services, for the Coast Guard. But multiple storms, one after the other, city after city? That's a policy question. And meanwhile, after Irma, there’s Hurricane Jose, right now a comparatively gentle category 1, spinning toward the Caribbean.

[MIKA27]

PRICELESS FERRARI DISCOVERED IN A JAPANESE BARN 40 YEARS ON

Rare Ferraris are nothing new in the world of well-heeled collectors but when a special prancing horse emerges from the shadows forty years on as the only one of its kind in the world, the definition of rare is completely redefined.

This is the Ferrari 365 GTB/4, a living and (almost) breathing example of what can happen when precious things get stowed away and forgotten about for decades. The pedigree of such a car hails from 1969 to the late 70s where just 1,200 365 GTB/4 Daytonas were built. Five of those examples were constructed from light-weight aluminium and designated to racing duties only – except one. Ferrari built a single example of the race car in full street-legal trim and that car is the one you see before you.

Chassis no. 12653 has resided in a Japanese barn for the most part of four decades thanks to owner Makoto Takai who didn’t want to sell it. That all changed this year with the Rosso Chiaro vehicle now heading to auction without reserve during September’s Leggenda e Passione auction in Maranello.

Based on the images alone, the car is obviously in ‘barn-find’ condition meaning it’ll need some work to bring it back to its former glory, but otherwise all original parts are intact. Inside the vehicle there’s black Nero leather alongside features like matching engine numbers, transaxle, Scaglietti body numbers and the original spare tyre – unused of course.

The car had originally been in the hands of three owners in Italy before it was brought over to Japan in 1971 where it sits with 36,000km on the clock.

The price of exclusivity? €1,700,000 or a touch over AU$2,000,000. Place your bids here.

[MIKA27]

TEXAS BRAND GROUND COFFEE

Texas has always had a penchant for self-mythologizing. If the denizens of the state had it their way, they’d have us believing they were all 10 feet tall, stronger than a dozen steer, and more handsome than anyone who has ever graced the cover of a glossy magazine. While that isn’t literally the case, the events of the past week have shown us that Texans meet their own high standards at least in terms of spirit. Maybe it is the open sky, the never-ending land, or possibly there is something in the water. Something like Texas Brand Coffee.

While this coffee hails from Texas, it is really a global affair. The certified organic and fair-trade beans are grown in Chiapas, Mexico by a series of family farms, and then shipped to Big Bend Coffee Roaster. That small team located in Marfa, Texas then takes the coffee green, roasts it, grinds it, and bottles it. Each of those containers are made from aluminum in France, and fitted with custom pewter labels here in the states. Each bottle only holds half a pound of ground coffee – but unlike the coffee, the bottles can be enjoyed more than just once.

 

[MIKA27]

PodCase Stores and Charges Your AirPods

Fed up with having to carry around the AirPods charging case everywhere he went, the founder of Pebble watch decided to design and build a better solution. PodCase stores and charges your AirPods right on the back of your iPhone to streamline your daily charging needs while also making it easier to access your AirPods when your phone is in your pocket.

The PodCase also has a built-in 2500 mAh battery, which is enough juice to fully charge your iPhone more than once or your AirPods forty times. In light of the fact that no one wants to deal with multiple cables, the PodCase uses USB-C to charge your phone, AirPods and the internal battery, which will be even more of a boon for those of you with new Mac laptops. The Mophie-style case with AirPod storage has an estimated delivery date of February, and PodCase expects to announce options for the iPhone 8 when it’s announced.

 

[MIKA27]

Nagasaki Knife Collection

The Nagasaki knife collection seamlessly blends all things Japanese, German and American to create a family of blades that you’ll look forward to using every day. Each one of the essential knives in the collection fuses Japanese & German craftsmanship with a construction process that includes a VG-10 steel core, 67 layers of Damascus and a Micarta handle.

The options in the Nagasaki collection include the following, a chef’s knife, Santoku knife, Nakiri knife, Nakiri knife with hollow edge, and a paring knife that all excel at their intended purpose and are gorgeous when displayed on a magnetic knife strip or on a cutting board. Whether you’re cutting vegetables or fruits with a Japanese Nakiri knife or slicing meat with a traditional chef’s knife, the Nagasaki collection includes a knife you’ll want in your kitchen.

The Nagasaki knife collection is on Kickstarter until early October with estimated delivery in January 2018, but they do have early bird options that will be delivered in time for Christmas if you want something special under the tree this year.

[Fuzz]

3 hours ago, MIKA27 said:

Nagasaki Knife Collection

 

Watched their vid on Kickstarter. Cringed at the way the guy in the vid was cutting things.  Can anyone say missing finger tips?

[Akela3rd]

Watched their vid on Kickstarter. Cringed at the way the guy in the vid was cutting things.  Can anyone say missing finger tips?

Likewise. Slicing a tomato with something that sharp towards his fingers - ugh.

Thunder & Lightening '75-'15

[Fuzz]

9 minutes ago, Akela3rd said:

Likewise. Slicing a tomato with something that sharp towards his fingers - ugh.

Thunder & Lightening '75-'15
 

Reminds me of the time I was in Myers (Aussie department store) and this sales guy was showing me some knives. First cringe worthy moment was when he accidentally dropped the knife, and as it bounced on the counter, he pressed his body up against the counter to catch the knife between himself and the counter! Second instance was when he was putting the paring knife back in its little plastic sleeve, with the blade facing his thumb... you can kinda guess what happened next.