Links for August 16, 2017
Finland Has a Sports Screw Loose
More than 2,000 people ventured to the remote backwaters of central Finland recently for the 20th annual Swamp Soccer World Championships. If you and your spouse want to compete in the Wife Carrying World Championships, you must come to Finland. The Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships? Finland. The World Berry Picking Championship and the Air Guitar World Championships? Finland and Finland.
“We have some weird hobbies,” said Paivi Kemppainen, 26, a staff member at the swamp soccer competition and master of the understatement.
When water is poured over a landscape formed of continents and mountains, what does it do? Land isn’t arbitrarily arranged on a planet. Plate tectonics sort rock into lighter and heavier, and clumps the lighter rock together as continents. And at any level of magnification closer than a full global picture, coastlines will have a similar, fractal look.
This fractal nature means you can focus on the coast of a small territory or examine the margins of a continent, and the contours* should be about the same. In fact, if you aren’t feeling very inspired, you can take a zoomed-in island from Earth* and make it your fantasy continent, or vice versa.*
How to build an amazing board game collection for $10! – Print & play, stock pieces, parlor games, and free RPGs.