How Prosperity Transformed the Falklands

> the islands are oddly similar to the Shetlands or the Isle of Skye—the bleak, rocky landscape; the blustery rain; the nearness of the sea—as though a piece of Scotland had broken off into the Atlantic and drifted eight thousand miles south, past Ireland, then Portugal, past Morocco and Mauritania and Senegal, down past the coasts of Brazil and Uruguay, and come to rest just a few hundred miles north of Antarctica.

In short, it takes a mundane detail like the similarity of landscapes and climate between the Falklands and Scotland, and adds an interpreted fantastic explanation of it by simile (landmasses moving across the Atlantic). It can feel excessively twee and almost corny when you identify the technique, but I appreciate it nonetheless. I wonder if readers have identified other notable examples of the New Yorker style from this article or elsewhere.

> The islanders did what they could to undermine the enemy. Reg Silvey, the Cape Pembroke lighthouse keeper and a radio ham, rigged an aerial out of a steel-core washing line and transmitted troop information to the British. Terry Peck, a policeman, concealed a telephoto camera in a drainpipe and walked around taking photographs of Argentine missile sites. A farmer named Trudi McPhee led a caravan of islanders in Land Rovers and tractors through hostile territory at night across East Falkland to Tony and Ailsa’s farmhouse, where British troops needed vehicles to transport weapons. Eric Goss, a manager at Goose Green, convinced Argentine soldiers that the lights of British ships in Falkland Sound were moonlight reflecting off seaweed.

Assuming Starlink continues to go to plan, it would be a huge boon for remote places like this and probably very transformative to its economy.

There are 3,480 Falklanders. My high-school had 3,900 students.

The weather is pretty bleak. Warm season average high temp in January is 57F. Average low in June is 32F. Mostly cloudy/overcast 60% of the week pretty much year round. I.e., it's never really warm enough to do a lot of outdoor activities other than hiking or maybe horseback riding. Only 20% of days are 'wet' days, so you don't have to worry all that much about rain. Still, it's too cold for swimming or beach-going, not cold enough for skiing. Admittedly, I just skimmed the article, but this caught my eye: "Since the late nineteenth century, islanders had wanted a swimming pool because the sea was too cold to swim in, so nobody knew how, and, when boats capsized, people would drown."

Make no mistake, there are many folks who prefer this climate, and the remoteness and seeming lack of immediacy that is growing in the rest of the world. I imagine you'd stay for the sameness of each day. I could see it as an unplug for a while, but living there would get, for me... dull.

One thing I did wonder, though, what does a Falklander accent sound like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiHFhRyxU48

Glad Britain ended up taking a different route with the Falklands than what they did with Hong Kong.

At its height the British Empire covered a quarter of the land on Earth and claimed dominion over a fifth of humanity; the saying was that the sun never set on the British Empire. Turns out, thanks to these various islands, it still doesn't: https://what-if.xkcd.com/48/