8 ms·

Ladonia: An Illegally Created Nation Where Creativity Rules

48 points by wikiburner 13y ago

lcasela 13y ago
We need more mirconations.
- Natsu 13y ago
  Given that apparently all it takes is for someone to "declare" an unrecognized micronation, I hereby declare one particular square micron in international waters, known only to me, as the world's new smallest unrecognized micronation: Nanotopia. Our motto will be "never found, never conquered." We allow dual-citizenship so long as you don't tell anybody.
  - bpicolo 13y ago
    Picostan would like to formally declare war against Nanotopia.
    - mml 13y ago
      Attodonica: "Splitters!"
    - Natsu 13y ago
      Good luck finding us! :) Even if you comb through the entire great Pacific garbage patch, we'll still elude you!
      - bpicolo 13y ago
        If you can't be found we might as well have already won the war, no?
        Natsu 13y ago
        We secretly annexed Picostan before the war. Unless you destroyed yourself as well, we're still here! Or maybe there... I can't remember :)
    - sitkack 13y ago
      Femtopia has always been at war with the larger, overbearing neighbors of Picostan. The largess and crudness drowns out our finer points.
- theklub 13y ago
  Get a giant boat and park it out in international waters.
dijit 13y ago
I had considered the possibility of purchasing an island and having actual people living and working with me. a bunch of my friends on IRC were very keen on the idea, although I don't suspect they know what burden it would entail. yes, we'd be able to set up our own privacy policies and, yes we can have super fast internet, lay our own fiber and infrastructure of that nature could be created. however, agriculture, the bureaucratic hoops we'd have to jump through to successfully secede and the general hard work and labour that would have to go in, I believe, is unaccounted for. this is a cool concept, and micronations are a nice idea, I just wish I could find a plot of land that's not owned, I'd definitely put a lot of hard work into getting out of my country.
- sjs382 13y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6395148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6395148
- the_watcher 13y ago
  How do you lay your own fiber and actually get connectivity? I've always wanted to try and take complete control of my internet, but as I understand it, the most I could do is last mile.
  - ChuckMcM 13y ago
    Actually you can, if you choose to, work out with a metropolitan area to put fiber between any two points, working with states to get it between states is more work and really needs a small staff to keep track of all the action items (you'll meet a lot of politicians). There are some dusty workable rules laid over from the AT&T breakup in the US that require some access rights. The last time I priced it out (I was depressed about my choices) it was about $125K to get a fiber between my house and the nearest peering point (PAIX, which is slightly closer than MAE-West). That was about $10K per mile. Once you get there you need to find an IP transit provider to hook up with. Lots more choices than 'cable' or 'dsl' though :-)
  - scarecrowbob 13y ago
    The businesses that serve up to that last mile will vend to folks. At least, out here in the sticks in texas, there are guys who have businesses laying wire and building towers-- you'd call one of them and have them get service, just like time warner or whoever does when they want service in an area. Not cheap, but if you have a business or a community, that's what you do, as I understand it.
stevesearer 13y ago
I might be reading this story incorrectly, but it seems like Ladonia is just a normal piece of property which is owned by artists who issue "citizenship". Is there some other quality I am missing that separates it from any other piece of property someone owns, creates a website for, and calls a micronation?
- kalleboo 13y ago
  I used to live in the municipality where there is going on. The most interesting part is the legal wrangling. It's not private property - it was built with driftwood in a public nature preserve. The authorities wanted it gone, but first of all - it's natural driftwood - is that illegal? Well, it turned out to be. So the artist sold the sculpture itself to some uncontactable people outside of the country, and suddenly the municipality couldn't just order him to remove it, and so on and so forth. He then built another sculpture of cement with hundreds of numbered rocks, and sold each rock to a different person, in order to spread the "blame" further. Eventually it got so popular it became a local tourist attraction. And so it still stands. edit: Aside from that it's just a kooky artist doing kooky things. Lars Vilks in infamous in Sweden for his stunts. He's also been outspoken in free speech issues which has made him a target of Muslim fundamentalists.
- adisbladis 13y ago
  Not really.. It's just as much of a country as my apartment is. The artist in question has also had lots of media attention for his work depicting Muhammed (the prophet): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Vilks#Muhammad_drawings_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Vilks#Muhammad_drawings_c... The guy is a racist nutjob.
  - kalleboo 13y ago
    I doubt he's racist. He's more of an offline troll.
    - vilhelm_s 13y ago
      And hardly a nutjob---if you read his blog (www.vilks.net) he is clearly quite smart. My impression is that he mainly trolls the art establishment. It's usually quite difficult to tell how serious he is. His book "Hur man blir samtidskonstnär på tre dagar: handbok med teori" ["How to become a contemporary artist in three days"] seems to seriously and carefully argue for George Dickie's institutional theory of art, while at the same time it is clearly taking the piss out of contemporary art projects...
owenversteeg 13y ago
Does anyone else hate how the horizontal scrollbars make you want to scroll left (with your arrow keys) and then it turns out that this is the command to go to another article?
- drdeca 13y ago
  Probably, yes.
donretag 13y ago
At first, I thought it was a nation created by those that speak Ladin, which would not be surprising considering the autonomous stature of the region. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladin_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladin_language
- davidw 13y ago
  They actually don't have much of an incentive to form their own country - they get piles of money from Italy and Austria as well. Indeed, Sud Tirol is often cited as a good example of how to handle a linguistic/cultural minority, which mostly involves the aforementioned piles of money, and a lot of freedom to use their own language. In the Ladin speaking area, almost all the signs, for instance, are in Ladin/Italian/German. In the German speaking area, they're in German and Italian.
ivanca 13y ago
Such a moronic title: all nations are created illegally, if you believe otherwise show me the paperwork of the USA territory, signed by all previous residents (native Americans)... and no, their graves do not count as a signature under any legal definition.
- sp332 13y ago
  Not nearly "all" nations are created illegally. Try the Czech Republic and Slovakia, for example. And what about the Algonquin Nation, were they created illegally?
  - my_username_is_ 13y ago
    While you do offer good counterexamples, these are more the exception than the rule
    - protomyth 13y ago
      "All" only requires one counter example. People should really say something other than "all" unless they really mean "all".
      - ivanca 13y ago
        Your brain should not work as a compiler, when everything must be 100% strictly correct on the language syntax to be considered valid.
        protomyth 13y ago
        People shouldn't use absolutes when they don't mean an absolute. It is not about 100% strictness, its about understanding what someone is saying. The "STOP" sign actually means stop, not maybe (that's "YIELD"). In other words, don't get pissy when you use absolute proclamations and others call you on it.
- parfe 13y ago
marc0 13y ago
I consider it an enormously antiquated idea to bind nations to a piece of land. We should try to arrive at a more abstract definition. And yes, of such nations we need many more.
- zem 13y ago
  you might enjoy doctorow's "eastern standard tribe", which, while not one of his better books, had some nice ideas. the premise was that the kind of people who spent large amounts of their time hanging out online would coalesce into tribes based around timezones, and that the timezone you were physically living in would not necessarily correspond to the tribe you belonged to and arranged your waking hours to match.
supersystem 13y ago
"Goaded, Vilks ignored the announcement and decided to take control of the area and secede from Sweden" The whole secession would be somewhat more believable if the police protection of Vilks didn't costs the Swedish tax payers about a million USD per year.

48 points by wikiburner 13y ago

lcasela 13y ago

We need more mirconations.

Natsu 13y ago
Given that apparently all it takes is for someone to "declare" an unrecognized micronation, I hereby declare one particular square micron in international waters, known only to me, as the world's new smallest unrecognized micronation: Nanotopia. Our motto will be "never found, never conquered." We allow dual-citizenship so long as you don't tell anybody.
- bpicolo 13y ago
  Picostan would like to formally declare war against Nanotopia.
  - mml 13y ago
    Attodonica: "Splitters!"
  - Natsu 13y ago
    Good luck finding us! :) Even if you comb through the entire great Pacific garbage patch, we'll still elude you!
    - bpicolo 13y ago
      If you can't be found we might as well have already won the war, no?
      - Natsu 13y ago
        We secretly annexed Picostan before the war. Unless you destroyed yourself as well, we're still here! Or maybe there... I can't remember :)
  - sitkack 13y ago
    Femtopia has always been at war with the larger, overbearing neighbors of Picostan. The largess and crudness drowns out our finer points.
theklub 13y ago
Get a giant boat and park it out in international waters.

dijit 13y ago

I had considered the possibility of purchasing an island and having actual people living and working with me. a bunch of my friends on IRC were very keen on the idea, although I don't suspect they know what burden it would entail. yes, we'd be able to set up our own privacy policies and, yes we can have super fast internet, lay our own fiber and infrastructure of that nature could be created. however, agriculture, the bureaucratic hoops we'd have to jump through to successfully secede and the general hard work and labour that would have to go in, I believe, is unaccounted for. this is a cool concept, and micronations are a nice idea, I just wish I could find a plot of land that's not owned, I'd definitely put a lot of hard work into getting out of my country.

sjs382 13y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6395148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6395148
the_watcher 13y ago
How do you lay your own fiber and actually get connectivity? I've always wanted to try and take complete control of my internet, but as I understand it, the most I could do is last mile.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  Actually you can, if you choose to, work out with a metropolitan area to put fiber between any two points, working with states to get it between states is more work and really needs a small staff to keep track of all the action items (you'll meet a lot of politicians). There are some dusty workable rules laid over from the AT&T breakup in the US that require some access rights. The last time I priced it out (I was depressed about my choices) it was about $125K to get a fiber between my house and the nearest peering point (PAIX, which is slightly closer than MAE-West). That was about $10K per mile. Once you get there you need to find an IP transit provider to hook up with. Lots more choices than 'cable' or 'dsl' though :-)
- scarecrowbob 13y ago
  The businesses that serve up to that last mile will vend to folks. At least, out here in the sticks in texas, there are guys who have businesses laying wire and building towers-- you'd call one of them and have them get service, just like time warner or whoever does when they want service in an area. Not cheap, but if you have a business or a community, that's what you do, as I understand it.

stevesearer 13y ago

I might be reading this story incorrectly, but it seems like Ladonia is just a normal piece of property which is owned by artists who issue "citizenship". Is there some other quality I am missing that separates it from any other piece of property someone owns, creates a website for, and calls a micronation?

kalleboo 13y ago
I used to live in the municipality where there is going on. The most interesting part is the legal wrangling. It's not private property - it was built with driftwood in a public nature preserve. The authorities wanted it gone, but first of all - it's natural driftwood - is that illegal? Well, it turned out to be. So the artist sold the sculpture itself to some uncontactable people outside of the country, and suddenly the municipality couldn't just order him to remove it, and so on and so forth. He then built another sculpture of cement with hundreds of numbered rocks, and sold each rock to a different person, in order to spread the "blame" further. Eventually it got so popular it became a local tourist attraction. And so it still stands. edit: Aside from that it's just a kooky artist doing kooky things. Lars Vilks in infamous in Sweden for his stunts. He's also been outspoken in free speech issues which has made him a target of Muslim fundamentalists.
adisbladis 13y ago
Not really.. It's just as much of a country as my apartment is. The artist in question has also had lots of media attention for his work depicting Muhammed (the prophet): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Vilks#Muhammad_drawings_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Vilks#Muhammad_drawings_c... The guy is a racist nutjob.
- kalleboo 13y ago
  I doubt he's racist. He's more of an offline troll.
  - vilhelm_s 13y ago
    And hardly a nutjob---if you read his blog (www.vilks.net) he is clearly quite smart. My impression is that he mainly trolls the art establishment. It's usually quite difficult to tell how serious he is. His book "Hur man blir samtidskonstnär på tre dagar: handbok med teori" ["How to become a contemporary artist in three days"] seems to seriously and carefully argue for George Dickie's institutional theory of art, while at the same time it is clearly taking the piss out of contemporary art projects...

owenversteeg 13y ago

Does anyone else hate how the horizontal scrollbars make you want to scroll left (with your arrow keys) and then it turns out that this is the command to go to another article?

drdeca 13y ago
Probably, yes.

donretag 13y ago

At first, I thought it was a nation created by those that speak Ladin, which would not be surprising considering the autonomous stature of the region. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladin_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladin_language

davidw 13y ago
They actually don't have much of an incentive to form their own country - they get piles of money from Italy and Austria as well. Indeed, Sud Tirol is often cited as a good example of how to handle a linguistic/cultural minority, which mostly involves the aforementioned piles of money, and a lot of freedom to use their own language. In the Ladin speaking area, almost all the signs, for instance, are in Ladin/Italian/German. In the German speaking area, they're in German and Italian.

ivanca 13y ago

Such a moronic title: all nations are created illegally, if you believe otherwise show me the paperwork of the USA territory, signed by all previous residents (native Americans)... and no, their graves do not count as a signature under any legal definition.

sp332 13y ago
Not nearly "all" nations are created illegally. Try the Czech Republic and Slovakia, for example. And what about the Algonquin Nation, were they created illegally?
- my_username_is_ 13y ago
  While you do offer good counterexamples, these are more the exception than the rule
  - protomyth 13y ago
    "All" only requires one counter example. People should really say something other than "all" unless they really mean "all".
    - ivanca 13y ago
      Your brain should not work as a compiler, when everything must be 100% strictly correct on the language syntax to be considered valid.
      - protomyth 13y ago
        People shouldn't use absolutes when they don't mean an absolute. It is not about 100% strictness, its about understanding what someone is saying. The "STOP" sign actually means stop, not maybe (that's "YIELD"). In other words, don't get pissy when you use absolute proclamations and others call you on it.
parfe 13y ago

marc0 13y ago

I consider it an enormously antiquated idea to bind nations to a piece of land. We should try to arrive at a more abstract definition. And yes, of such nations we need many more.

zem 13y ago
you might enjoy doctorow's "eastern standard tribe", which, while not one of his better books, had some nice ideas. the premise was that the kind of people who spent large amounts of their time hanging out online would coalesce into tribes based around timezones, and that the timezone you were physically living in would not necessarily correspond to the tribe you belonged to and arranged your waking hours to match.

supersystem 13y ago

"Goaded, Vilks ignored the announcement and decided to take control of the area and secede from Sweden" The whole secession would be somewhat more believable if the police protection of Vilks didn't costs the Swedish tax payers about a million USD per year.