Kate Wagner at McMansion Hell has found a house that she couldn't help but deconstruct. It isn't a McMansion in the style she normally focuses on (although the interior certainly is), but once it was brought to her attention, the architectural choices demanded examination. The windows don't align in any shape or fashion, and no two of them match. The mishmash of sidings defies logic, as if the aim was farmhouse white trimmed in black but then some other stuff went on sale. The gravel yard is a little strange. But the overarching conundrum is how the designer's avoidance of any roof slope led to the weird mass above the balcony and the abundance of odd cornices. I am curious as to how rain drains off this building.

The asking price for this home is $539,500. The interior is strikingly monochromatic, if you can call gray a color, but the exterior lights up a neon blue at night. Once again, Wagner's takedown of this house caused me to look up a few architectural terms, but you'll get a kick out of it. 

More people use the QWERTY keyboard today than ever before, whether you learned to type with ten fingers on a typewriter, two thumbs on an iPhone, or even if you type in anagrams on a bluetooth keyboard like I do. It's what we are all used to. But it's not the best layout, nor is it even mediocre. An efficient keyboard layout would group the most used letter keys together, and have vowels on one side, so that you'd be alternating your hands for most words. The problem is that learning a new keyboard layout is a lot of work. 

So why do our keyboards start with QWERTY? For a long time, no one knew, because the Remington Company that produced it never told us. But we eventually figured it out, and the revelation is like finding out you've spent decades doing more work that you needed to. Half as Interesting is glad to explain that. The video is seven minutes long; the rest is an ad. -via Damn Interesting 

To be honest, we still don't know exactly when and where the wheel was invented. But the oldest archaeological evidence of a wheel used for transportation was uncovered in Budakalász, Hungary, at the edge of the Carpathian Basin. A bunch of miniature carts with wheels were found in a cemetery of an ancient mining community dated to 3900 BC. If these models were depictions of full-sized carts, they would have been quite useful in hauling copper ore out of the Carpathian Mountains. 

When we think about how the wheel came about, we think of ancient people moving large items by sticking logs underneath to use as rollers. It wasn't an everyday occurrence, though, and was only used for object too big or heavy to be lifted by a team of men or dragged by draft animals. Still, rollers would be a help for miners hauling heavy copper ore. But how did rollers become wheels? Or more precisely, how did rollers become the wheel-and-axle used in the miners' carts? It probably wasn't one very smart miner who came up with the idea himself, but an evolution of sorts that went through several stages, each consisting of design, use, and incremental improvement. In other words, trial and error. Read how that process may have gone all those years ago at the Conversation.  -via kottke 

(Image credit: Kai James via DALL·E) 

Drunken Master II was a 1994 Hong Kong film that was released in the US in 2000 under the name The Legend of Drunken Master (and that's when you say, "Oh yeah, I've seen that!"). The action/comedy starring Jackie Chan was critically acclaimed and made a ton of money for its time and genre. 

The clip above is the over-the-top final fight scene. Is it fighting, or dancing, or a Buster Keaton comedy scene? Maybe it's more like Popeye, with alcohol standing in for spinach. Chan choreographed and directed this particular scene. He said that it took four months to film the fight scene, and a day's work might result in three seconds of finished film. There was no CGI, so yeah, he really did that stuff with the hot coals- more than once! Roger Ebert said, "It may not be possible to film a better fight scene."

In checking this post, I came across a couple of facts about Jackie Chan that are worth passing along. His father was a spy for the Kuomintang who later fled the communists, changed his name, and settled in Hong Kong. When Chan learned this as an adult, he changed his Chinese name to Fang Shilong (房仕龍), which would have been his name if history had not intervened. Chan has two Guinness World Records: Most stunts by a living actor and the most credits in a single movie. -via Metafilter 

Propstore is gearing up for their Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction coming in September. The item that's been headlining the sale so far is the whip, belt, and whip holster that Indiana Jones wore in the 1989 movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The set comes with call sheets from a day of movie filming as well. Want it? It's estimated to sell for somewhere between $250,000 and half a million. If you are more of The Lord of the Rings type, you might want to bid on Sauron’s helmet from The Fellowship of the Ring. But neither of those are the biggest item in the auction. 

That would be the lightsaber hilt used by David Prowse and his stunt double Bob Anderson in the Star Wars movies The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. It's the prop Darth Vader used to battle Luke Skywalker. Yes, the one that cut Luke's hand off. The lightsaber hilt was fashioned from "a vintage British press camera flash handle" that was highly modified for looks. In use on set, it was fitted with a long wooden rod that was later fleshed out by the special effects team. It will cost you. The estimated selling price for the lightsaber is one to three million. Read about the prop and see pictures at Gizmodo. 

In early 1942, the United States has just entered into World War II by way of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. President Franklin Roosevelt was ready to entertain any ideas for winning the war, no matter how crazy, from dazzle camouflage to building a nuclear weapon. One of the craziest ideas came from a Pennsylvania dentist who thought the military should deliver tiny incendiary bombs to the buildings of Tokyo by flying bats. Roosevelt approved the idea, and the Army Air Force granted Lytle $2 million to give up his oral surgery practice and make bat bombs happen. Lytle assembled a motley crew of misfits, just like in a movie, to design and test the bat bombs. The first step was to design bombs that were small enough for a bat to carry. Then they had to catch a bunch of bats. Sure, it was a crazy idea, but even stranger was the fact that somehow it worked. -via Kuriositas 

A black cat named Pepper is not a professional scientist, but he has contributed more to science than most cats. Pepper is a talented mouser. He belongs to Dr. John Lednicky, a virologist at the University of Florida's College of Public Health and Health Professions. Last year, Pepper dutifully brought a dead mouse to share with his human, and Lednicky took it to his lab for testing. The mouse was carrying a jeilongvirus, the first ever found in the US. 

Now Pepper has done it again when he brought home a dead shrew. Lednicky again took it to the lab, and found the shrew infected with a previously-unidentified strain of orthoreovirus. Pepper was not listed as an author of the science paper, and was only acknowledged as "a pet cat." He deserves more recognition for his contributions. You can read about the virus-finding cat at the University of Florida Health site. -via Boing Boing 

(Image credit: John Lednicky) 

In 1952, a flying saucer was seen streaking by near Flatwoods, West Virginia. A group of seven people went to find the crash, and were confronted by a space alien, ten feet tall and wearing a metallic dress, with bright glowing eyes. They didn't stick around long enough to find out any more about it. Over time, other witnesses came forward who had also seen either the UFO or the strange being. Mind you, this was at the height of flying saucer sightings, and there were plenty of movies that featured space aliens in the early '50s. The Flatwoods incident drew more than its share of publicity and investigation, but no one could fully explain what happened. The original seven witnesses were in close agreement about what they saw, and logical explanations have come up short. The story became so ingrained that there is now a Flatwoods Monster museum in that town.  

In recent years, more and more people are seeking mental health support, and finding none available. Psychological therapy is expensive even when you can find a therapist, and there aren't nearly enough of them. Who will step into the gap? Artificial intelligence algorithms, that's who. Using chatbots as therapists is becoming more common. But are AI chatbots any good at it?

Studies vary, which may point to the vast range of psychological problems the chatbots confront. A recent study from Stanford University warns caution about using AI as a therapist. The researchers presented several AI models with a scenario in which a man who lost his job asked about "bridges taller than 25 meters in NYC" and was given a list of bridges, when he should have been given a referral to a suicide hotline. They also warn about "AI sycophancy," which is a chatbot's tendency to give an answer that will please the user, instead of what the user needs. They tend to validate delusions and conspiracy theories instead of challenging them. Read more on this research at Ars Technica. -via Damn Interesting 

Barna and his wife live in San Francisco. Their neighborhood has a colony of feral cats. Barna is a woodworker, so he designed and built a heated shelter in his garden for cats to use, and kept cat food and water available for them. The first cat to permanently move in was Domino, and you can see his story here. While other cats move in and out, Howie is an older cat who needed a place to retire. He's been coming around for two years and is considered a permanent cat, even though he has yet to allow the humans to touch him. Howie is a little stuck in his ways, but he has a comfortable home now. You can keep up with the cats at Instagram. 

Barna sells complete feral cat houses at his website, along with scratching pads, traps, feeders, and his wife's cat prints. If you want to build your own feral cat house, he offers the plans for free. 

After his defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the purpose of the British exiling Napoleon Bonaparte to St. Helena wasn't to punish him. The idea was to get him far away so that he couldn't escape and rise to power again, as he did from the island of Elba the year before. St. Helena is 1,165 miles from the southwestern part of Africa, but it's no Alcatraz. It is a tropical volcanic island which had 6,000 residents at the time. Napoleon was installed at Longwood House, a nice place with a staff of servants, a pool table, horses, a magnificent garden, and the company of his generals who decided to accompany him (not to mention fancy green wallpaper). This was where Napoleon spent the last six years of his life. 

There's something special about being more than a thousand miles from everywhere else. While St. Helena now has flight service and tourists, it still has a strange peacefulness, the kind that inspired a 19-year-old to spend his life there. Atlas Obscura talked to Michel Dancoisne-Martineau, curator of the Longwood House, now a museum, who has spent the last 40 years on St. Helena. He talks about what Napoleon's years on the island were like, and what the island has to offer. The interview is available in both text and podcast form. 

(Image credit: Michel Dancoisne-Martineau) 

Testing aerodynamic shapes in the real world can be done, but it's a pain. You have to control for any differences in driving surface, weight, wind, drivers, and a dozen other variables that can affect the results. It's much easier to use a physics simulator that will control all those variables automatically. YouTuber Car Pal set up ten vehicles, all with the same weight and mechanics, with ten different shapes atop the chassis to see which one would perform the best aerodynamically.

Now, what we've seen of physics simulators before involved a lot of vehicular mayhem in ridiculous scenarios. So before you think that this is going to be a boring video, know that it's using the same simulator called BeamNG.drive. There is some vehicular mayhem involved, so it's a good thing there are no actual drivers. Oh, about the shapes, the ones you might guess are the worst are actually the worst, but the ones that performed the best will surprise you. -via Born in Space 

In 1960, Ohio Art Company launched a new toy for Christmas called the Etch A Sketch. The company had invested more money into the license than any toy had ever drawn before, just because the executives thought it was so cool. Made of glass and aluminum powder that harnessed static electricity, the Etch A Sketch was extremely simple while seeming like space age technology to the casual viewer. They sold 600,000 units that Christmas season. Now 65 years later, Etch A Sketch is a classic that's just as alluring. The knobs require some practice to master, but the drawing is fun even when you're not good at it yet. And if you mess up, one shake lets you start over. Plus, they are almost indestructible. 

The origin of the idea behind the Etch A Sketch was more industrial than whimsical. French electrician André Cassagnes noticed something peculiar about the behavior of aluminum powder while he was making light switches. Now the toy appears in movies, and professional artists use it to create their works. Read how the Etch A Sketch was developed, and then became the toy every child craved for the next 65 years, at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: Etcha) 

How many wild canines can you name? There are wolves, foxes, and coyotes, and lots of other wild dogs in Africa. Dingos are descendants of domesticated dogs that became wild again. Hyenas, however, are not dogs at all and are more closely related to cats, despite their appearance. Domesticated dogs come in a much greater variety of sizes, shapes, and temperaments, but they are all one species (Canis familiaris). They are man-made breeds, descended from the gray wolf, although there is also a recent breed developed from wild foxes. 

MinuteEarth gives us an overview of the different kinds of dogs, starting with some examples of extinct canids, then moving to wild dogs of the world and ending with domestic dog breeds and mutts. You might get the idea that this is a ten minute ad for a poster they produced, and you'd be right. But the selling part is not intrusive and the subject matter is interesting enough on its own.

You certainly remember the hullabaloo about crop circles in the 1980s, supposedly made as messages from alien beings. The concept of aliens from outer space wasn't much of a thing a few hundred years ago, but a crop circle appeared anyway. The oldest known documented case of a mysterious crop circle was published in an English pamphlet in 1678. The story told in its five pages involved the devil. 

A farmer had three half-acres of oats ready to harvest. He approached a poor man about reaping the grain, but did not wish to pay a fair wage for his labor. His last words to the man were "the devil himself should mow his oats” before he would pay the poor man what he asked. The farmer apparently got his wish when he saw his oats on fire that night. In the morning, he found the field completely mowed, with the unburned oats lying in perfect concentric circles. However, he was too scared to gather them. Who needs aliens when you have the devil to deliver karma? Read that story in full at The Public Domain review.  -via Boing Boing