#mark cooper-jones

[viktormiuke]

Look at this beautiful thing @wokemindvirusmd made me

This is so amazing Zach I own you my life and all pokemon plushies I find on my way from now on

It's them btw (I made cat versions of Jay and Mark for a silly thingy)

LOOK @super-autism-death-ray AND @mono-squamblo!!!

[skrunklydoo]

JUST HANDED OVER MY MONEY TO JAY AND MARK

ZERO REGRETS

[thenerdthatlivesat221bonnaboo]

Me: So Neil Gaiman said...

My mom: Is that the guy who writes books for teens and makes educational videos with his brother?

Me: No, that's John Green. Neil Gaiman is the guy who wrote Good Omens.

My mom: I thought that's the guy with the hair

Me: No, that's J.J. McCullough

My mom: Isn't that the guy who makes videos about maps with someone else?

Me: No, that's Jay Foreman

My mom: I thought that was the guy who wrote Good Omens

Me: No, that's Neil Gaiman

Repeat:

[vertyblog]

hey so apparently nobody on tumblr posts about Map Men the very good series by Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones about Maps and also Men this is the most recent episode go watch it

[viktormiuke]

It's two AM and I'm trying so hard not to laugh at Mark (Map Man) saying his sherwani makes him look fabulous

[semper-legens]

107. This Way Up, by Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman

Owned?: No, library Page count: 349 My summary: Maps! A constant, trustworthy source of information about how the world looks…right? These are the stories of the maps that went wrong - leaving off increasingly large parts of the world, inventing mountains, providing deadly shortcuts, and overall stopping people getting from A to B. Or at least, getting there easily. My rating: 3.5/5 My commentary:

Who doesn't like a bit of weird nonfiction? This crossed my desk at work, and it looked pretty fun. The history of weird maps, from an Ikea map that got rid of Aotearoa completely, to the map used by the Donner party which promised more than it was worth, to paper towns and other little copyright traps used on maps. Maps aren't my particular cup of tea, I'm a hopeless case when it comes to geography, but something about the book made it sound like it might be a good read. And, for the most part, I liked it! It was a comedic approach to maps and mapmaking that highlighted some particularly interesting cases. The woman who trusted her satnav so blindly she ended up in another country was bananas; I forget that, before the age of Google Maps, these things were a lot less trustworthy. Like, I was around for satnavs being a Thing (and my Dad stubbornly refusing to use one), I grew up with Mum in the passenger seat with a big paper map. It wasn't that long ago. How quickly we forget. Anyway, the information shared in this book was interesting…but.

The thing I didn't like was the book's tone. Sure, this is more in the vein of pop non-fiction, not academic - which is fine, I like some pop non-fiction from time to time when the academic stuff gets too stuffy. The problem is that I think it sacrificed some of the interesting stuff in the name of being funny, and some of the bits that it was doing just…wasn't. A chapter about Soviet censorship of maps is interrupted constantly by censor bars and text in faux-Cyrillic saying stereotypical oppressive Russian things, which just got grating after a while. The chapter on the Donner party is presented through a fictional podcast with an obnoxious presenter, but like, he was so obviously obnoxious that it got grating after a while, and I just wanted the information without all the guff. Some of the chapters were really good, the jokey jokes were kept to an appropriate level, and neither the comedy nor the information overpowered each other. It's just that a lot of the humour here felt like it was doing bits for the sake of it, rather than to help craft a more lighthearted approach to the subject matter. I still enjoyed it, but…maybe it would have been more palatable in smaller sittings.

Next, the women who inherited Caribbean fortunes.

[viktormiuke]

Mark Cooper-Jones aka one of the Map Men once said he had violin lessons in the boarding school days and got progressively worse

Never related more to an englishman

[stxllarvision]

i just made the stupidest thing (map men in underscores tell me music video)