Visible Cities

City Guesser is a pretty fun website, it gives you a walking around video of a random city and you have to guess where it is. It’s superior to Google Street View for exploring someplace because you can hear the crazy homeless people shouting in a back alley you pass by, so it’s almost like you’re really there. I recommend putting headphones on for full immersion.

It’s got trophies and multiplayer mode and stuff but I’m honestly just using it to remember what it was like to walk on a crowded street so I don’t care about the points or whatever it is.

Radio Free Bird

Screenshot from Radio Garden showing the southern tip of South America and a circle around the eastern half of the Falkland Islands and a caption indicating the radio station selected as BFBS Falkland Islands

This Radio Garden thing is kind of neat, it’s like Google Maps except specifically for radio stations. Spin the globe and see what they’re listening to in Cambodia!

Although I think the radio ads are automatically streamed according to your location, otherwise it’s weird that a Canadian online casino is being advertised on Cambodian radio. And yes, I was looking for Vietnamese radio stations so I could make a Good Morning, Vietnam joke but I guess none are streaming online.

Neverending 80’s story

Holy shit, was this the music video for the theme song of The Neverending Story?

The only thing missing is Bastian riding Falcor in the foreground. This video needs a goddamn albino luck dragon, by damn!

Not the Renaissance

I just discovered the Reddit community r/AccidentalRenaissance and boy, this is some top shelf stuff. People post modern pics that resemble Renaissance paintings in composition and whatnot. I suggest filtering for the top-rated posts, as some people’s definition of a Renaissance painting is along the lines of “neat picture from a basketball game”.

My favourite of the recent posts is of a British soldier at a wedding checking his cellphone:

Delenda Toronto

There’s something fascinatingly morbid about this nuclear bombing simulator, which maps the effects of a nuking (fatalities, injuries, the maximum radius for getting houses flattened, etc) onto whatever location you select. You even get to pick the type of bomb and the height of the detonation.

Toronto nuking effects mapped out

Here’s Toronto getting a surface burst Fat Man bomb dropped right on the CN Tower – 34,200 dead, 69,550 injured, and radioactive fallout all down the western shore of Lake Ontario reaching as far as Oakville.  Or if that’s boring you can drop a 100 Megaton Tsar Bomba on the White House! Hours of fun for the whole family!

You’re under arrest

Police lay witchcraft charges after Toronto man billed $101,000 for evil spirit removal

So, uh, why do we still have a law against witchcraft? Couldn’t you arrest Wiccans under this law? This appears to be one of those zombie laws that are probably going to be purged from the Criminal Code, along with laws against crime comics and duelling.

Though looking into it further, the law appears to be against fraudulently practicing witchcraft, so I guess if you can actually transform a prince into a frog you’re in the clear.

The relevant part of the Criminal Code is this:

Canada Criminal Code – Part IX Offenses Against Rights of Property (False Pretences)

Pretending to practise witchcraft:

365 Every one who fraudulently
a) pretends to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration,
b) undertakes, for a consideration, to tell fortunes, or
c) pretends from his skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner anything that is supposed to have stolen or lost may be found

is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

A summary offence is apparently a minor crime so you’re not looking at a life sentence here. And if you’re wondering what a “crafty science” is as referred to in c), then according to this Washington Post article, it’s an archaic legal term for fortunetelling and spell-casting. The legal phrase itself dates back to the time of Henry VIII of England, where a specific law punishes

all . . . idle persons going about in any countries or abiding in any city borough or town, some of them using divers & subtle crafty & unlawful games & plays & some of them feigning themselves to have knowledge in physic, physiognomy, palmistry, or other crafty science whereby they bear the people in hand, that they can tell their destinies deceases & fortunes & such other like fantastical imaginations to the great deceit of the King’s Subjects . . .

However, it was used colloquially in The Canterbury Tales to refer to alchemy. Also, this isn’t just a Canada thing – the town of Joplin in Missouri has an ordinance stating that

Any person who shall advertise by display of a sign, circular or handbill, or in any newspaper, periodical, magazine or other publication, or by any other means, to tell fortunes or reveal the future, to find or restore lost or stolen property, to locate oil wells, gold or silver or other ore or metal or natural products, to restore lost love, friendship or affection, or to reunite or procure lovers, husbands, wives, lost relatives or friends, or to give advice in business affairs, or advice of any kind or nature to others for or without pay, by means of occult or psychic powers, faculties or forces, clairvoyance, psychology, psychometry, phrenology, spirits, mediumship, seership, prophecy, astrology, palmistry, necromancy or like crafty science, cards, talismans, charms, potions, magnetism or magnetized articles or substances, oriental mysteries, crystal gazing or magic of any kind or nature shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor.

Do you notice the part where being a therapist who helps patients with relationship troubles legally means you can be arrested for witchcraft in Missouri? I like that part. I gotta say, this is just such an interesting rabbit hole to fall into.