Reflections by danah boyd on her first visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos:

Comparing WEF to any other event is hard, but I cracked a smile when Nick Bilton remarked that WEF is a lot like Burning Man. In so many ways, he's right. A lot of people overwhelm one extreme weather location and battle non-normative conditions (Davos is crowded, covered in ice, and extremely difficult to navigate) to interact with others. In both events, there are so many different kinds of communities colliding – sometimes interacting and sometimes not. And both cost gobs of money to attend, thereby excluding all sorts of people.

Abroad: they do things differently there…

Swiss animal lover Priska Küng runs a kind of matchmaking agency — for lonely guinea pigs that have lost their partners. She lives with around 80 of the furry, squeaky little creatures, in addition to six cats, a number of rabbits, hamsters and mice in the village of Hadlikon, some 30 kilometers from Zürich.

Küng, 41, rents out her guinea pigs, a service that has been in high demand in the Alpine nation ever since animal welfare rules were tightened up a few years ago. Switzerland has forbidden people from keeping lone guinea pigs because the animals are sociable and need each other's company.

As a result, the sudden death of a guinea pig, shocking enough in itself, can also place the hapless owners outside the law if they only had two of the pets. [...]

[Via The Awl]

The hazards of keeping a solar-powered aircraft aloft for 26 hours:

Just 17 hours after takeoff, a blog on the project's Web site reported, "André says he's feeling great up there."

It continued: "His only complaints involve little things like a slightly sore back as well as a 10-hour period during which it was minus 20 degrees Celsius in the cockpit."

"That made his drinking water system freeze up and worse of all his iPod batteries die."

[Via James Fallows]

Contestants' lamps illuminate the trail at the start of the Glacier Patrol, or Patrouille des Glaciers.

This Swiss Mountain House, half-submerged into a hillside, looks lovely and cosy. A house worthy of a Hobbit.

[Via Swissmiss]

The Biggest Swiss Flag Ever.

(Which, impressive as it may be, isn't a patch on the Largest Flag in the World.)