There is a little part of Spain that is completely surrounded by France. The town of Llívia and its 1,600 or so residents are Spanish, yet they are inside France, which gives them a certain independence and the attitude that comes with it. That strange geography came about more than 300 years ago because of how the exact words of a border agreement was defined.
Llívia was an important Roman settlement and the ancient capital of Cerdanya up until the early Middle Ages. In 1659, after more than two decades of war, France and Spain reached a peace agreement called the Treaty of the Pyrenees, according to the terms of which all Spanish “villages” north of the Pyrenees were to be handed over to France. But Spain held on to Llívia, pointing out a technicality that Llívia was a town and not a village, and thus cheated France out of it. The surrounding villages became part of the French kingdom, but Llívia stayed in Spain and became an enclave of France. The five-square-mile municipality is now connected to the rest of Spain by a narrow, two-lane “neutral” road, the N-154, which is administered by both France and Spain with a rotation of six months each.
There are benefits to being separated from Spain, such as in the 2017 Catalonian referendum, when Spanish authorities disrupted the voting in most of Catalonia, but could not reach Llívia. But there are difficulties, too, including dealing with the bureaucracy of two nations. Read about Llívia at Amusing Planet.
Now that June is here, Screen Junkies continues its Blockbuster Summer series from last summer. In 1996, the disaster movie Twister ended up as the second-highest grossing film of the year (after Independence Day). Now, Screen Junkies uses an Honest Trailer to revisit the predictable and formulaic yet action-packed Twister. You just can't beat non-stop destruction and flying cows.
The International Photography Awards has anounced the winners of their latest competition, which used the theme OneShot: Movement. The Photographer of the Year Award, the highest honor in the competition, goes to Anne Mason-Hoerter of Germany for the above image, titled Wild Carrots.
Multiple scan data combined with digital camera data of a Wild Carrot, scientific name being Daucus carota. My photographic process involves first taking the plant apart and then scanning each piece. I then combine those images with images I have taken with my cameras. I wanted to reproduce the unseen movement of plants at night. There are over 50 single images and took over a month to complete.
See first, second, and third place winners in the categories of Fine Art, Nature, People, Street Photography, and Technology/Machine, plus honorable mentions, at the winners page. -via Digg
It's possible, or even probable, that you haven't heard of the movie The Wretched. You might be surprised to know that it is the number one film in the US, and has been for five weekends straight! The teen horror film was made on a minuscule budget by independent studio IFC, which is taking advantage of the fact that most theaters have been closed and blockbuster summer films from the big Hollywood studios have been postponed. IFC has stuck to their release schedule, and their movies play in drive-in theaters with almost no promotion.
“There’s a window of opportunity for success, and IFC is taking that risk and innovating,” said Jeff Bock, a box office analyst with Exhibitor Relations. “A studio like Warner Bros. can’t take chances like that because they’d lose money, even if drive-ins were packed. There’s not much expected for a film like ‘The Wretched.’ If it gets to $1 million, it’s like another studio getting to $100 million.”
It’s taken some recalibration and innovation to get near those box office receipts. Smaller studios rely heavily on mom-and-pop movie theaters, whose owners come to learn and help cultivate the taste of their clientele, to get the word out about a new movie. They can’t afford the same robust marketing spends as Marvel or James Bond films. For promotional efforts tied to “The Wreched,” IFC leaned heavily into the old-school nature of outdoor moviegoing. But they’ve found that chatter throughout the community continues to be one of the surest ways to spread the gospel.
The always-entertaining and enlightening CGP Grey explains how to be a pirate, with lore largely adapted from the book The Invisible Hook. The above video has the captain explaining things to you. Here's the same lesson, from the quartermaster's point of view.
The papers ran colorful accounts of an 1897 fire in a Manhattan apartment building that was started by a cat fight. That in itself was newsworthy, but the description of the ensuing escape by the residents reminds us of a Three Stooges comedy.
According to the Sun, Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. McIlvaney, who lived in the back rooms behind the Gallaghers, tried to make it down the stairs at the same time. Both women were “stout and short of breath,” and they ended up getting wedged together on the first-floor landing.
The two women began fighting and pushing at each other, both refusing–or unable–to budge. Finally, the firemen arrived and, “after some difficulty,” they were able to some kind of wedge tool to separate the women.
I have no idea if any firemen were able to get past the women in order to get to the fire, or if the fire continued to burn until the human “blockage” was removed. Either way, as I like to say, you can’t make this stuff up.
Considering the fun the newspapers had with the incident, we are glad to find that no one was hurt. “The only other damage was to the tempers of Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. McIlvaney.” But what you'll want to know is the story of the cats who started the blaze, which you can read at The Hatching Cat.
Here's the way to automate a puppy's playtime and/or exercise. All you need is a leash and the proper size furniture -and a camera, of course. The kicker here is that the puppy eventually catches his prey! That's a good dog. -via Digg
In a world where movie trailers set the stage for our entertainment choices and a lot of revenue for a certain Southern California town, Don LaFontaine reigned supreme over the audio content of those promotional shorts. From 1964 until his death in 2008, LaFontaine's voice imparted the importance of what you were invited to see. Movie trailers weren't his only voiceover work, but it's what he was most known for. LaFontaine came about that deep, resonant voice naturally, and suddenly, when the adolescent's voice broke in 1953.
As you might expect, being of an age when a boy’s life primarily consists of playing flappy with Mr. Happy and otherwise spending the remaining 12 seconds of the day when he wasn’t doing that making fun of his friends and being made fun of in turn, LaFontaine stated he was afraid to speak the next day at school after his voice changed and thus, initially refused. When his teacher became frustrated with this now mute student and forced him to speak, LaFontaine uttered a phrase he no doubt would say countless times to execs the world over, “What do you want me to say?” This apparently prompted his already frustrated teacher, who thought he was putting the voice on, to send him to the principal’s office.
He would later recount that this caused him to feel even more self-conscious about his voice. However, it didn’t take long for his friend’s to realize his baritone vocals allowed him to be “everybody’s dad” on the phone- i.e. he could be used to call the school, represent himself as their father, and let the secretary know his kid was sick and would be missing school that day. Some of these instances apparently were his first paid voice acting gigs.
You've seen dollhouses, but you haven't seen the graceful art of 1/12 scale rooms like those of Chris Toledo! His subject matter is historic interiors, so detailed that you wouldn't know they were miniatures if he didn't include something else, like his hand, for scale.
The River Thames in London is a treasure trove of historical artifacts, and there are plenty of people whose hobby involves looking for those artifacts between the high and low tide marks. This activity is called mudlarking. It began as a way for the poorest of the poor to find something worth selling, but now attracts those with an interest in history as told by the objects people left behind. Lara Maiklem has been mudlarking all her life, as she details in her book Mudlark: In Search of London’s Past Along the River Thames. Maiklem explains why the Thames is such a rich depository for items lost or discarded over thousands of years.
"There are lots of reasons for all the stuff in the river. Obviously, it’s been used as a rubbish dump. It was a useful place to chuck your household waste. It was essentially a busy highway, so people accidentally dropped things and lost things as they traveled on it. Of course, people also lived right up against it. London was centered on the Thames so houses were all along it, and there was all this stuff coming out of the houses and off the bridges. It was the biggest port in the world in the 18th century, so there was all the shipbuilding and industry going on.
"And then of course, there’s the rubbish that was used to build up the foreshore and create barge beds. The riverbed in its natural state is a V shape, so they had to build up the sides next to the river wall to make them flatter so the flat-bottom barges could rest there at low tide. They did that by pouring rubbish and building spoil and kiln waste, anything they could find—industrial waste, domestic waste. When they dug into the ground further up, they’d bring the spoil down and use it to build up the foreshore, and cap it off with a layer of chalk, which was soft and didn’t damage the bottom of the barges.
"One of the reasons we’re finding so much in the river now is because there’s so much erosion. While it was a “working river,” these barge beds were patched up and the revetments, or the wooden walls that held them in, were repaired when they broke. But now, they’re being left to fall apart, and these barge beds are eroding as the river is getting busier with river traffic.
"Every tide, something new will turn up, and the contents date right back to Roman times in central London. When they dug cellars or basements in the 18th and 19th centuries—this is when they created the barge beds—they’d dig down into medieval Roman layers, and then bring that spoil down to the river to build up the barge beds. So that’s possibly why we’re finding Roman objects next to Victorian objects next to Georgian objects. Such a mess of history in there.
"The beauty of the Thames is that it’s muddy and anaerobic, so if something falls into the mud, it’s preserved as perfectly as the day it fell in. It’s not too acidic, it’s not too alkaline, and no oxygen gets to it, which means there’s no degradation at all. It’s like suspended animation until you find it—it’s not like finding things in fields or archaeological digs. What we’re pulling out of the mud is pristine: Sometimes you’ll pull a pin out, and it’ll still be shiny, or you’ll find coins that have absolutely no damage on them at all, like they fell out of someone’s pocket yesterday. It’s incredible. Centuries-old leather and wood and even fabrics have been found, which is quite incredible. The key is, though, getting to it before it washes away or it starts to erode. The wave action starts to damage these objects."
Maiklem has found fossils, 16th-century gold, raspberry prunts, human bones, ancient coins, and even a glass eye. Read about mudlarking the Thames at Collectors Weekly.
Oh, we know what happens to cats when they get near catnip, but it's always fun to watch as they indulge -especially with psychedelic music and a few visual effects thrown in. It's totally harmless, because cats don't have to make it to work on time or impress their in-laws or or keep an eye on those burning candles. BBC Earth presents a montage of cats enjoying some nip from the series Pets: Wild At Heart. -via Digg
We love to read stories of heroic dogs who save lives, but you have to wonder- would your dog be so brave and helpful? Dogs are known for loyalty, but there is a wide variation in dogs (as in people) when it comes to loyalty, empathy, bravery, and maybe most of all, intelligence. Scientists put a bunch of dogs to the tests to see if they would "rescue" their humans.
For the main challenge, called the “distress test,” dog owners were placed inside a large box, where they pretended to be trapped and in distress. The owners, who were trained beforehand to sound realistic, cried out to their pets, shouting “help!” or “help me!” Dogs were able to rescue their owners by opening a light-weight door on the box, but they had to figure that out for themselves.
A total of 60 dogs participated in the experiment, none of whom received any kind of special rescue training prior to the experiment. Of these, 20, or one-third, rescued their owners, “which doesn’t sound too impressive on its own, but really is impressive when you take a closer look,” said Van Bourg, in reference to the two control tests used for the experiment. The dogs participated in the two control tests and one rescue test in random order.
It turns out that figuring out how to do it is crucial. Dogs who learned how to open the box under other circumstances were very much more likely to rescue their humans. So your dog would most likely want to save you ...if he could figure out how. Read how the experiment showed that at Gizmodo.
When working on anything having to do with a computer, it is best to 1. backup your work first, 2. make edits on a copy, and 3. get cozy with your "undo" button, and allow time to consider using it. There are times when all these steps are skipped, and the worst thing possible happens. Tom Scott explains his most egregious "onosecond." The story is a couple of minutes shorter than the video.
Mother Nature is sometimes a prankster. The caterpillar that will eventually turn into the moth Uraba lugens is called the mad haterpillar because it grows its own hat, out of its own shed exoskeletons! This video is really only a minute long, then host Steve Mould discusses future episodes. -via Geekologie
No matter what the situation, there will be someone who figures out a way to illegally profit from it. Julia Lyons was one of those, a longtime swindler who, when she was arrested, would just slip away and change her name to one of her many aliases and con someone else. During the flu epidemic of 1918, Lyons had an idea that made her shenanigans easier.
As The Washington Post reports, Chicago was in the throes of the 1918 influenza pandemic that fall, and hospitals were enlisting nurses to tend to patients at home. Lyons, correctly assuming that healthcare officials wouldn’t be vetting volunteers very thoroughly, registered as a nurse under several pseudonyms and spent the next two months caring for a string of ailing men and women across the city.
Lyons’s modus operandi was simple: After getting a prescription filled, she’d charge her patient much more than the actual cost. Once, she claimed $63 for a dose of oxygen that had actually cost $5 (which, once adjusted for inflation, is the same as charging $1077 for an $85 item today). Sometimes, “Flu Julia,” as the Chicago Tribune nicknamed her, even summoned a so-called doctor—later identified by the police as a “dope seller and narcotic supplier”—to forge the prescriptions for her. Then she’d flee the property, absconding with cash, jewelry, clothing, and any other valuables she could find lying around the house.
