Why are there so many Irish or Irish-like pubs around the world? They're popping up all over the place.

One contributing factor is the work of companies that mass-produce flat-pack Irish pub kits with all of the necessary components. Eater reports that all that's necessary is to assemble, stock, and open them.

Mel McNally, an Irish architect, launched one such company in 1990. The Irish Pub Company offers six different styles of Irish pub: Shop, Gastro, Victorian, Brewery, Country, and Celtic. You can find thee pubs around the world, including in the US, Canada, Switzerland, Russia, and Kazakhstan. But the company manufactures the components in Ireland, so they are, strictly speaking, Irish pubs. 

Another company named ÓL Irish Pubs has produced similar pubs in Oman, New Zealand, India, and other countries. A firm named Ballance Hospitality helps bars develop menus that reflect actual Irish foods mixed with those in demand by customers. This is a thriving industry.

It's unclear how long international markets will continue to favor the development of these "McPubs." But as long as the style is in demand, these companies will supply drinkers with the Irish experiences that they crave.

-via Messy Nessy Chic | Photo: Irish Pub Company

Elvis Presley died in 1977, but that's no reason he can't cover -and put his own style into- a song from 1992. This would have been a #1 hit for him.

Artificial intelligence is plenty scary when it tries to serve us misinformation or take away our jobs, but it's sweet when it's for purely entertainment purposes. Then again, I'm not sure how the Presley estate would feel about The King singing Sir Mix-a-Lot's song "Baby Got Back." That probably depends on whether there is any money to be made from it. A commenter at YouTube offered money if he could produce a full-length verion in time for his wedding. I felt inspired to laugh, and you will, too. This nonsense is the latest from Dustin Ballard, otherwise known as There I Ruined It. The tune is from Elvis' hit song "Don't Be Cruel," and the algorithm was programmed by MikeyNL1038.

Common sense would tell you that parents, and especially stay-at-home moms, look forward to the beginning of school in August so they can have some time away from hungry kids complaining that they're bored. Parents do often feel that way, but according to a study by three professors from Mississippi State University, mothers actually have a lot less free time during the school year.

On weekdays during the school year, moms average 25 minutes less sleep, 28 minutes less free time, and seven minutes less for exercise than they did during summer vacation. Fathers show this effect as well, but not as much.

See, during the school year, kids may be gone for six to eight hours, but every day requires a lot of prep, including getting children to bed at night and up in the morning, preparing breakfast (and maybe lunch), driving to and from school, managing extracurricular activities, and supervising homework. Generally staying on a strict schedule takes a lot of time and energy.   

The data came from the American Time Use Survey. Younger children didn't participate in the time survey, but teenagers ages 15-17 did, and it shows that school drains their time sleeping and unwinding as well. Read more details on this study at The Conversation.

Amazon Echo and Alexa are pretty cool virtual assistants to have so that we get to live in a science fiction future. But it doesn't feel like we're living in the future unless we can convince ourselves that we're actually on an old science fiction television show. You might prefer a virtual assistant more like Theopolis on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century than a subtle assistant that fits modern decor.

Instructables member dermbrian sympathizes. He repackaged his Amazon Echo to reflect vintage science fiction aesthetics. The new case is actually a cookie tin to which he added LED notification lights. One of these is ominously labeled "sentience". If that unfortunate event happens, dermbrian can use the toggle switch, which is as shut-off for the entire system in response to an AI uprising.

The voice is nice. But, personally, if I had a digital assistant, I'd want it voiced by Majel Barrett Roddenberry.

-via Hack A Day

The lowest car in the world

[📹 carmagheddon (IT): https://t.co/9z0IrZySua]pic.twitter.com/AvExqIFJnA

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) June 25, 2023

For the ultimate lowrider experience, we aren't just on the ground. We appear to be actually sinking into the earth!

Carmagheddon is an Italian car modification shop that produces the wildest and most surreal vehicles imaginable. They include a toilet go-kart, a compact car with a jet engine, and a car with springs for tires.

One of Carmagheddon's recent projects is a lowrider that fits entirely within the upper half of the original body. You can watch a lengthy build video in Italian here. I gather that the car now has only one drive wheel positioned in the center of machine. It's not remote controlled; there's actually a person squeezed inside.

Tom Scott is in the US now, and like most overseas visitors, had to buy health insurance to cover his trip. But he's not taking any chances by climbing on the world's first jungle gym on display in Winnetka, Illinois. The jungle gym, sometimes called monkey bars, was developed by Charles Hinton and patented by his son Sebastian Hinton in 1923. They story we didn't know was the scientific goal of the climbing toy. The reason it didn't make much difference to the children who climbed it was because by the time kids started school, they already knew how to climb trees, fences, and hills. The jungle gym just made it fun for everyone to join in together. Setting one on a school playground gave us the added thrill of possibly falling on gravel or pavement instead of plain grass or soil. Read the story of the first playground jungle gym at the Winnetka Historical Society.

You might have never heard of the marsupial mole. They live in Australia's deserts, swimming under the sand. They are weird animals, even by Australia's standards. They are tiny, blonde, have no visible eyes, sport strangely large claws, and their marsupial pouch is open on the back end, so that sand doesn't get in when they move.

Marsupial moles are only seen just a few times every ten years, so when artists James Young and Elliat Rich spotted one crossing the road near Uluru last week, it made the news. Young picked the mole up and carried it across the road, another 20 feet or so, and set it in a spot where the sand looked soft. It soon dug its way back underground. Oh yeah, they recorded video evidence.

This mole is considered rare because it's rarely seen, but it was taken off the endangered list because they leave tracks, droppings, and remains indicating there are plenty of them. They just stay away from us. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Elliat Rich)

Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks made three romantic comedies together in the 1990s: Joe Vs. the Volcano in 1990, Sleepless in Seattle in 1993, and You've Got Mail in 1998. The first was a flop, and You've Got Mail has its fans but a terrible premise for a lasting relationship. Sleepless in Seattle was a masterpiece of the genre, having all the required elements and driving us to tears with a happy ending. The movie was released 30 years ago today, so you might want to jump back in time to relive that film and learn some interesting trivia behind it.

Some of the trivia has to do with the locations. It wasn't easy to get permission to shoot at the Empire State Building, and finally Leona Helmsley allowed the cast and crew in for six hours only. Seattle needed to be shown with rain, but it was the driest summer ever in the city when they shot the film, so water trucks had to be brought in to provide fake rain. And remember when the Empire State Building lit up with a Valentine heart? The movie did it with digital effects, but the building recreated it with real lights for the film's 25th anniversary.

That's just the beginning of the 30-item trivia list at Cracked regarding the film Sleepless in Seattle.

Sometimes we are totally impressed with things people eat in movies, and want to recreate those dishes. Binging with Babish is really good at showing us how to do that. But movies are also filled with odd meals that we remember a bit less fondly. These are desperation dishes, when a character has few ingredients and little choice but has to eat anyway.

A24, the movie studio that brought us Everything Everywhere All at Once, is releasing a cookbook of these desperation dishes called Scrounging: A Cookbook. The 54 recipes contained in it are less for epicures and more for movie fans who want to relive a cinematic moment. Remember the spaghetti from the 1960 move The Apartment? Jack Lemmon had no colander, but a tennis racket will do. Kevin made a 12-scoop sundae in Home Alone because there was no one to tell him not to. And if you've forgotten the Pixy Stix sandwich from The Breakfast Club, it's in there, too. Read more about these memorable if not delicious recipes at Mental Floss, and how to order the cookbook.  

This video was launched with the unfortunate name of "Why every radio station sounds the same". I thought that might be boring, because I don't even listen to pop radio anymore. But it turns out to be a very thorough explanation of music radio's evolution in the age of deregulation. Phil Edwards tracks my 24-year career as a radio disc jockey (a term I now have to explain to younger people) and the changes the industry went through. We've come a long way from WKRP. I went through all these changes until I decided to just go home and blog, because that was more fun. But that's a personal story, and if I say any more, I'm just asking for someone to respond "Okay, Boomer." In this history of radio, you'll recognize how radio has changed no matter what era you discovered it as the easiest way to add a soundtrack to your day. If you're at all interested, there's a fairly comprehensive list of source reading at the YouTube page. -via Kottke

You've seen pictures of these cool-looking vampire hunting kits. We posted about them four times between 2006 and 2011. One brought $14K at auction! They are purported to be 150-200 years old, and contain tools like a cross, a Bible, a stake, a gun, and bottles of what we may presume would be things like holy water and garlic. People who pay huge sums for these don't take into account that no record of such kits exist before the 20th century. Yes, they're fake.

But the takedown at Fake History Hunter has some intriguing details. While the kits themselves are not real vampire killing kits from previous centuries, the items contained in them often are pretty old. People who make these use very old wooden boxes, manufacture the bespoke linings, and fill them with antique objects that could be from different places and eras. As someone who collects old bottles, this makes me want one even more. But I wouldn't spend a lot of money for it. -via Strange Company

Covid really did a number on movie theaters, as it did to offices workplaces and dine-in restaurants. But movie theaters had been seeing a decline in attendance way before covid for reasons ranging from mass shootings to poor projection quality, and they aren't recovering much three years later. With attendance down, they raise prices to make up that revenue, and therefore attendance goes down again. Can you spot the problem with that logic? Really, which would you rather do: go to a theater and see the newest movie on opening weekend, sitting next to strangers and eating $10 popcorn, or wait a few weeks to stream it at home in your pajamas eating 50¢ popcorn, and put the movie on pause when you need to take a break? Roger Horton has many more reasons that theaters need to advertise to get you out of the house in this Honest Ad.  

This set of mysterious stones has remained on the periphery of the modern age. It serves as a reminder that we had quite a colorful past, and also a shining beacon of light for scholars who wish to study more about our world history. Even if it has stood there for quite a long period of time, it remains as enigmatic as ever. 

However, a team from the University of Salford, in Manchester, and English Heritage, the charitable trust that manages Stonehenge, have unveiled one of the many intrigues surrounding the site. These experts have found out that the original circle of 157 standing stones (only 63 complete stones remain today) once acted like a sound chamber. The stones can amplify and enhance voice and music within its circle, but it would sound muffled and indistinct outside the area.“Some acoustical research had already been done at Stonehenge, but it was all based on what’s there now,” Trevor Cox,  an acoustical engineer at the University of Salford and one of the researchers in the study, shared. “I wanted to know how it sounded in 2200 B.C. when all the stones were in place.”

Read more about the study here.

Image via wikimedia commons

The first thing we learn in World History class is that humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers until 10,000 years ago, when they discovered how to grow crops and then settled into permanent communities, which gave them time to develop civilization. But an archaeological dig called Nahal Ein Gev II in northern Israel near the Sea of Galilee is turning that idea on its head.

In 1963, a village was discovered here that flourished for about 200 years as a permanent settlement, although serious excavation only began in 2010. The residents have been identified as Natufians, a culture previously thought to be completely nomadic. They built stone houses, established a cemetery, and developed sophisticated tools- 12,000 years ago! Some of the finds include artifacts that indicate they may have used a rudimentary type of sewing machine and spindles to make string from fiber. They also made and wore jewelry. These indications of a permanent settlement hint that not only were the Natufians of Nahal Ein Gev II two millennia ahead of the presumed agricultural revolution, but that they built on technology that may be even more ancient.  

While these villagers had tools to cut plants, archaeologists aren't ready to say they cultivated crops. That brings up the question of whether permanent settlements may have preceded the development of agriculture altogether. Read about this intriguing village and what we learned about it so far at Smithsonian.    

(Image credit: Daniel Rolider)

A bear in Colorado Springs, Colorado, decided to pull a reverse Goldilocks and invaded a house, possibly looking for porridge. The bear entered through a broken window on the ground floor, and made his way upstairs. He apparently wanted to go back outside, but didn't realize that a second story window would have a different exterior. Neighbors caught a recording of the bear looking confused and hanging out of the upper window. The bear considered dropping to the ground, but then thought better of it and climbed back in. But he tried that window again with the same results. It turns out the bear had accidentally shut himself in a bedroom. A police officer opened the door so the bear could leave,  through the same downstairs window he entered. We suspect the police officer stayed as flat as he could behind that door.

Ryan MacFarlane was away that day and came home to missing pork chops and snacks and some minor damage, much less than he had expected. The bear had been implicated in several other house invasions in the area. -via Boing Boing