Redditor randomlyassigned20 bought a house that's around 100 years old. He found a feature underneath the house that has him stumped, and he posted three pictures. Normally, the folks at the Old Houses subreddit are pretty helpful, and indeed some guessed it was for salt storage, or ice storage, or the ash clean-out for a previous chimney. But the rest of the comment forum leaned into another story altogether.    

There are dozens more of these. Even randomlyassigned20 got into the humor of it. When the same pictures were posted to the Century Homes subreddit, the consensus was that this is an ash clean-out with a coal chute to the right. There's no chimney in that spot, but many old houses, including mine, had more chimneys back when fireplaces were the only heat source, which were later removed when central heating systems were introduced. But even that post still had jokes about Canadian hieroglyphs. Sometimes you just have to roll with the joke.   

Bill Schaumberg is a producer and editor at The Dodo, so you know that animals are important to him. He started dating Kate, who has a cat named Rita. Bonus! Yeah, Bill has plenty of pets of his own, but he still wanted to make friends with Rita. Badly. However, Rita is definitely a one-person cat who is clearly very attached to Kate, and she is set in her ways. That set up a challenge- can Bill persuade Rita to hug on him the way she hugs on Kate? You can't get too pushy in this situation, because cats can see through that. Winning a cat over takes time, dedication, and consistency. But Bill knows that. Watch his adventures in wooing Rita over time. Not only does he eventually make a good impression on Rita, he also gains points with Kate, because women love a man who is good to their pets.   

You probably don't recognize the title of the song "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys," but you will certainly recognize it when you hear it. It's an instrumental tune that Kevin MacLeod composed ten years ago to evoke a lighthearted, whimsical, and comical mood. MacLeod has made a name for himself (and quite a bit of money) by composing music and releasing it under a Creative Commons license, meaning anyone can use it for any purpose, as long as they give him attribution. Or you can pay him and use it without attribution.

Since the song is royalty-free, millions of users on YouTube, Instagram, and especially TikTok have selected "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys" as the background music for their funny videos. It's far from the most annoying TikTok soundtrack, and you can hear it here. Read how "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys" came about and how it's been used all over the internet at NPR. -via Nag on the Lake 

(Image credit: Owuor Jack)

You know how we who aren't rich like to make fun of the dumb ways rich people spend their money? One of the easiest ways to do that is to check out real estate offerings of expensive homes, and we've done that a lot at Neatorama and at Homes and Hues. It's what makes McMansion Hell such a fun site, because money doesn't automatically bestow good taste. Even when an expensive home is perfectly built and appointed, it strikes us as wastefully large and too difficult to care for. Conspicuous consumption is a serious affair, but it also makes you look weird. But there are often ridiculous quirks in these properties that make us feel better about not having the money to embarrass ourselves like that. Ryan George manages to put all our thoughts on such real estate excess into words and shows us pictures of the weird homes designed to suck up money from those who have way too much to care.

The seventh film in the Jurassic Park franchise has just wrapped up filming. Jurassic World Rebirth will take up the story of dinosaur de-extinction years after the end of Jurassic World Dominion, and we find that mankind is mostly safe from the escaped dinosaurs because they can't survive outside of equatorial jungles. But the three largest dinosaurs hold the key to a lifesaving drug that will benefit all mankind. So a top secret expedition goes to find them and bring back genetic material. Back in 1993, when Dr. Ian Malcolm said, "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should," he had no clue how that could be turned around to our benefit.  

Jurassic World Rebirth will feature an all-new cast led by Scarlett Johansson, and is expected in theaters on July 2, 2025. Screen Rant has an update on the filming and some speculation about what the movie should be.

One day I was driving up the interstate with the truck windows down and distinctly smelled pizza. I turned and saw a pizza parlor to the right. How does a pizza smell get to a speeding vehicle that far from the frontage road? That small event stuck with me until I ended up eating pizza that night.

Restaurants and other food vendors know the value of smell, and chain restaurants encourage associations with the unique smell recognizable at all their locations. That's why outlets like KFC and Burger King have toyed with perfumes that evoke the smell of their restaurants. It's why Cinnabon and Subway put their ovens near the entry door. It's also why Starbucks had to pull their breakfast sandwiches and redesign them in 2008- because the smell of the sandwiches interfered with the customary smell of the coffee, and customers noticed. Read up on how restaurants customize and maximize the smell of their food to lure customers in at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Btotanes)

Nike can put their trademarked swoosh alone on a blank page and people will know what it refers to. When a simple symbol becomes tied to your company so well that words aren't needed, that's branding success. One may argue that the Nazi swastika is the best-known branding symbol in the world. When you see one displayed, that tells you more than a thousand words could. So it's a bit jarring to see artworks and photographs that are more than a hundred years old with a swastika displayed proudly. But then you have to remember, that was before the Nazis ruined the swastika. 

The swastika is a symbol that goes back thousands of years, and was used all over the world. It's a bit of graphic design that is simple and clever at the same time. It lends itself well to tiling and was often used in fancy borders on ancient artifacts. It was a symbol of good fortune. So how did the Nazis adopt it for their philosophy of racial superiority? That had to do with the German archaeologist who discovered the ancient city of Troy and made the symbol famous around the world. Read how the ancient swastika was associated with the mythical Aryan race and became Adolf Hitler's brand at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: Brycesteiner)

The sea holds untold mysteries and legends of monsters from as far back as people have gone to sea. Most of the many sea monster sightings have been explained by drunk and disoriented sailors, and sea monsters that wash up on shore are usually known animals that have been partially eaten or have decayed. But people know what a squid is, because the smaller ones are quite familiar. In 1873, one that was mistaken for a shipwreck grabbed a fishing boat, but was fought off. But later evidence of giant squids was limited to dead specimens and body parts. Giant squids can be 40 feet long! We knew they were there, so why did it take until 2004 to find one alive? Maybe they are hiding from us. The Kraken is smarter than we thought. And that's just the giant squid- we still haven't seen a live colossal squid!  -via Geeks Are Sexy

Minne, if I understand it correctly, is something like a Japanese version of Etsy. It is definitely a massive online purveyor of handcrafts, such as this lovely handbag made to resemble a gyoza--a steamed dumpling.

It's most inedible at the moment. But since the body is leather, one could slice it up to create smaller, bite-sized gyoza.

When a pope dies, the cardinals of the Catholic Church meet at the Vatican to elect a new pope, a meeting called the papal conclave. In the 16th and 17th centuries, this process was critical for most of Europe, because the pope was a political as well as a religious figure. The cardinals were locked in, windows were covered, servants were dismissed, and all food delivered was thoroughly inspected to prevent anyone from sending messages. The food was meager anyway, and the bunks were hard, in order to hurry the process along.

Why such a hurry? Because when there was no pope and the cardinals were absent, order broke down in the streets of Rome. Courts were canceled, the jails were opened, and citizens let loose with their anger toward the deceased pope. Bankers ceased working and laid bets on who the new pope would be. The city's Jewish population bore the brunt of the lawlessness. The mayhem was a great argument for the separation of church and state, but that was still a long time coming. Read about the wild papal conclaves of the past at Jstor Daily. -via Strange Company 

Simon's Cat meets a stray named Teddy who has been homeless for some time, but not long enough to be feral. The cat feels sorry for him and tries to find him a new home. But Teddy wants to live somewhere where he will fit in on his own terms. This three-minute cartoon is actually an edit of an earlier, much longer story that explains the backstory of the cat Teddy. The reason the cartoon was edited for re-release is that the real Teddy, who lived with Simon's Cat creator Simon Tofield, recently passed away. This is a tribute to him.

See, Tofield has always drawn inspiration from his own cats, past and present. Teddy was a black cat who was the original inspiration for "the kitten," Tofield's second animated cat character after Simon's Cat. But then the real life Teddy grew up, while the animated kitten did not, and Teddy deserved his own character. The cat may be gone, but the character will remain.

I am, of course, exaggerating. You don't need to drop $2,500 to wear this astonishing piece of haute couture. That's because it's completely sold out and unavailable except as a used item. And who would be so gauche as to wear a used trash jacket?

Cory Infinite is a fashion designer who conceives of and assembles by hand one of a kind articles of clothing that will make you stand out in a crowd. The Trash Jacket is composed of found items in the, uh, vintage neighborhood of West Bottoms in Kansas City, Missouri.

Due to its current unavailability, you may be compelled to build your own.

-via Massimo

The Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards gets bigger every year, and this year they have been renamed for their sponsor. The 44 finalists for 2024 have been selected, so go see them all in this gallery. Click on each photo to bring up a full-size version. See the finalists in the video category here.   



The announcement of the finalists also means that voting is now open for the People's Choice Award until October 31st. Vote for your favorite at this page, and you'll be entered into a sweepstakes. The winners in all nine categories of the competition will be announced on December 10th. -via Real Clear Science

We've seen typewriters used as musical instruments a few times, and while it's cool, it's not all that melodic. But now it is.  Brazilian pianist Fabricio André Bernard Di Paolo, or Lord Vinheteiro (previously at Neatorama) is not only a talented musician, he has a deep knowledge of every every note on every piano key. He attached strings to his piano so that he could play it by typing on two typewriters! Now the piano is a stringed instrument. Sure, he did the attaching, but keeping track of which key goes with which note takes a lot of cognitive bandwidth. Not only that, but he is playing the melody with his left hand, and the bass rhythm with his right, because he has his back to the piano. That's somewhat akin to playing the piano from its backside, but harder because it's two typewriters. The song sounds lovely, punctuated by the clacking of the typewriter keys.

It is believed that a quarter of adult house cats suffer the chronic pain of osteoarthritis. That may be a price they pay for longer lives as pets. Existing treatment comes with side effects, so more research into feline pain is needed. But have you ever tried to take an electroencephalogram (EEG) of a cat? No, you haven't, but a team from the University of Montreal in Quebec has manage to do it for the first time ever on cats who were awake.

Cats aren't cooperative research subjects, and will not tolerate electrodes stuck on their heads. Co-author of the study Aliénor Delsart said the scientists were spending more time putting the electrodes back on the cats than they were doing the EEGs. The solution is the little cap the cat shown above is wearing. The team contacted a graduate student who crocheted, and she made the cats little caps that the electrodes were attached to. The cats tolerated them, as they would an owner who wanted to take pictures for cat memes. It wasn't a total success, as two cats had to be excluded from the study when they couldn't get with the program, but getting an EEG at all from a cat is a breakthrough. Read more about this research at Ars Technica.

(Image credit: Aliénor Delsart)