French YouTuber Lucile.
One reason people fall in love with Paris when they see it for the first time is that it looks exactly as it does in the movies or photographs. It is romantic, charming, and effortlessly beautiful, with its elegant boulevards, old stone buildings, cozy cafés, and iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.
A significant reason why Paris is so absorbing is that it is architecturally consistent, and the city and its citizens put a great deal of effort into maintaining that consistency. In a new video by Lucile, a French woman who creates cultural commentary videos about Paris and French culture, the city even goes so far as to create “fake” buildings to maintain its consistently beautiful appearance. "A lot of the fake buildings in Paris really blend in nicely with their surroundings and are so hard to spot. Just by looking at them, it would be impossible to notice,” Lucile explains.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
In the video, Lucile reveals that one building in her neighborhood appears to be a quaint French apartment building that was once social housing. Still, a little investigation shows that it's actually a massive data center complete with air conditioners on the roof—a rarity in Paris. The A/C units are there because the servers generate an incredible amount of heat.
Another building, 145, rue La Fayette, which has been called the "entrance to the underworld," is holding a secret. The doors are fake, allowing it to blend in with the neighborhood, and the roof is entirely flat. However, in reality, the entire building is actually an air vent for a French Metro.
Why do a lot of buildings in France have a similar design style? It’s because they underwent a massive redesign in the mid-19th century by an architect named Georges-Eugène Haussmann, a French official who served as prefect of Seine and demolished many of the old, cramped buildings from the Middle Ages. “In 1853, Haussmann came in, and he was basically given full powers to redesign Paris in a better way,” Lucile explains. “So, he went ahead, and he tore down entire neighborhoods and thousands of buildings. And instead, he built the elegant buildings and wide avenues we still have today in Paris. Haussmann really wanted to achieve a uniform look, so he put some really strict rules in place. And this is why a lot of the buildings in Paris look the same—they have the same height, the same façades, and the same balconies. Haussmann's influence on Paris was huge because today, around 60% of all of Paris' buildings are Haussmann-type buildings.”
2 Boulevard Haussmann, Parisvia Neoclassicism Enthusiast/Wikimedia Commons
Lucile also notes that 1972 is an important year for the city because, at a time when it was losing many classic buildings, a proposal for a brutalist block building was made to replace L'Amandier d'Or, a beautiful Haussmann design. "Luckily, people pushed back, and it became a pretty big thing. The French government had to step in, and they blocked the project, requiring the bank to preserve the façade,” Lucile explains. The amusing thing is that if you walk to the back of the preserved façade, it's actually a 1970s office building.
“This was one of the first times that Paris did the fake buildings,” Lucile says. “A lot of people wish they had kept the original building and renovated everything, not just the front. But, some other people think it's a great way to keep Paris’s charm while making room for more modern buildings. And wherever you stand, either way, this building set the trend.”
There’s something very satisfying about learning that there is a small amount of artifice in keeping Paris’s magical charm, like the false-front buildings you see at Disneyland or on a film set. But there’s something even more wonderful to know that the people of Paris, and its leaders, put so much effort into preserving its incredible ambiance.
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.