Six Things, Volume 58

Fish doorbell | Cricket | Communes | TFL | Birdsong | Title drop

Mar 09, 2024

Thing 1 – Fish doorbell

It’s migration season, so the wonderful Utrecht fish doorbell is OPEN.

The fish doorbell is a magnificently bonkers idea. Every spring, with the advent of breeding season, fish migrate to their spawning ground. Those looking to do it via Utrecht face a problem – namely, the Weerdsluis lock, which is mostly shut at this time of year. The solution is remarkably simple. Just install an underwater webcam to monitor the lock, stream it on the web, and set up a button so that viewers can alert the lock operator when a fish wants through. When there are enough fish the operator opens the lock.

Genius. (Although I am now desperate to know what kind of number is considered ‘enough’. Five? Ten? Fifty? A thousand? The scheme does seem vulnerable to the whim of the operator.)

It’s a strangely calming activity when you need a short break. It’s all a bit murky at the moment – recent rain has caused a build-up of sediment – but I am determined to persevere until I achieve a niche conservation ambition I never realised I had: doing my bit for the breeding cycle of Dutch fish.

You can see some of the success stories on the ‘nicest photos’ page. Slightly disturbingly, though, one of the photos seems to be not of a fish but of a great crested grebe – presumably occupying the space where until a few seconds earlier there had indeed been a fish.

Ah well. Great crested grebes need our help too.

Thing 2 – Cricket

While we’re talking Dutch genius, this old clip – which absolutely nails what cricket must look and sound like to the uninitiated – has resurfaced twice in the last week (thanks Laura, thanks Joel) which means the universe is telling me to share it.

Thing 3 – Communes

Twitter user Clara de Alberto produced this superb thing: a map of France featuring only communes whose population is smaller than the number of letters in the commune’s name.

Different countries have different approaches to dividing their land into administrative areas. France’s seems broadly to have been ‘the more – and the smaller – the better’. The median area of a French commune is just under 11 km² (compared to 22 km² for Italy. 40 km² in Belgium, 35 km² in Spain, and 15 km² in Germany.)

The range of size and population within these communes is vast. Paris (population: 2,175,601) is a commune. So is Rochefourchat (population: 1). And so, eerily, are the ‘ghost communes’ you can see huddled together in the northeast of the country on the map, each with zero inhabitants. These were villages entirely destroyed in World War I, which afterwards were not amalgamated with neighbouring communes, but live on as memorials. De Alberto goes into this phenomenon here (if you don’t read French, the ‘translate post’ function is your friend). The thread also includes the fun fact that the commune Fleury-sur-Orne, on the outskirts of Caen in Calvados, was, until 1917, called ‘Allemagne’. The decision to change the names is entirely understandable under the circumstances – inevitable, in fact.

Thing 4 – TFL

Thanks to Londonist for this, from Google Arts & Culture: TFL’s cultural archive, a ‘transport treasure trove’ comprising historic documents, images and maps charting the history of public transport in London. There are stories about maps, posters, gardens, lost property, the famous moquette, the typeface, horse buses and loads more – 94 in all, and nearly 2,500 images. Proper rabbit hole stuff.

Thing 5 – Birdsong

“Without the birds, how can we tell the seasons?”

Here’s a quite beautiful film. Simply called Birdsong, it’s about the nature of language and the language of nature and music and love and loss and life and… look, just watch it, why don’t you? It’ll take 18 minutes of your time.

Thing 6 – Title drop

Got a favourite film?

Ever wanted to know at what point(s) in that film a character mentions the title of the film? (This happens, it turns out, in 36.5% of films – or at least, the films covered in the analysis, which amounts to nearly 74,000, released between 1940 and 2023.)

Here you are.

Six Things