Kate Wagner goes to town on a $3.5 million home in New Jersey that can't make up its mind what style it's supposed to be. The 5-bedroom, 6.5-bathroom house was custom-built to evoke opulence, but the finished product looks like a checklist of things the owner wanted from a wide range of architectural history. Many of these details really can't quite be pulled off with modern building techniques. The interior decorating is even worse, as you can see from the image above. Wagner likens living in this house to a constant performance of living. While the rooms are adequately furnished, the very size of those rooms demands subdivision into areas of activity, so that the overall effect is almost institutional, no matter how swanky. She calls one bathroom "the Sistine Chapel of McMansion bathrooms" for the ornate ceiling, pool-sized tub, and seating for spectators. Read a detailed breakdown of how it all went so wrong at McMansion Hell.

Every year, a group of friends in Ventura, California, get together to do a costumed photo shoot to document their facial hair growth during "No Shave November" (previously at Neatorama). The campaign is for cancer awareness, but these guys have made it their own since 2013. Now they have enough images to produce a calendar! The Christmas-themed picture this year kinda seals that deal. You may also note that the sixth friend, who dropped out in 2014 except for his head seen on a pike in 2019, is back for 2024. Redditor C1eve1and101 posted the entire gallery of the annual photos today. You will need to greatly enlarge the pics there to see all the details.

This year, the guys all got tattoos on their thighs commemorating a previous year's photo. Then they got dressed up as Christmas characters: Frosty the Snowman, the Nutcracker, Buddy the elf, Santa Claus, Rudolph, and a candy cane. They also recorded footage of the photo session, which Michael Lubin (the candy cane) edited into a joyous video.

About a month ago, you may have seen a viral video of a dog atop the Great Pyramid of Egypt. It was an amazing moment, and people wondered how the dog got up there and why, and worried about how he could get down. The video left everyone with the wrong impression, but not in the ways that you would expect.

No, the dog atop the pyramid is not faked. His name is Apollo. He is a stray, but Apollo is famous among the locals in Giza for pulling this stunt anytime he pleases. He climbed down from the heights on his own just fine. And it's not the Great Pyramid; it's the Pyramid of Khafre, the second largest pyramid in Giza at 448 feet tall. Also, the paraglider you see in a selfie shot is not the paraglider who took the footage. The man you see added himself before he posted the video to Instagram.

Still, Apollo is a real canine climber. Read his story and the facts behind the viral video at the New York Times. -via Nag on the Lake

I’m all styled up and ready for a goatwalk this sunday 🎉 And as a gentlegoat - the older, the more stylish! My inauguration kicks off on sunday at 4 PM, swedish time! Remember that bags are not allowed in front of the stage. You can watch it live at the link in bio! pic.twitter.com/JwoLOAti5G

— Gävlebocken (@Gavlebocken) November 29, 2024

Every year, the Gävle Goat is inaugurated on the first Sunday of Advent and marks the beginning of the Christmas season for the residents of the Swedish town. The gigantic goat, made of straw, is a representation of the Swedish Yule goat. The first goat was erected in 1966 for the purpose of drawing tourists to Gävle, but it's not so much the goat itself that Gävlebocken is known for, but the constant threat of arson. The 1966 goat was burned down, and that vandalism has become sort of a tradition, no matter how securely it is guarded. Of the 58 goats that have graced Gävle over the years, 42 have been burned down. Last year's goat was not burned, but suffered destruction from jackdaws who pecked at the straw to reach the remnants of wheat until you could see through it.

You can follow the status of the Gävle goat on the live webcam. You can read more about the history of the goat, accounts of its destruction in years past, editorials about the pros and cons of burning it down, and even find videos of the burning goat, in a link-heavy post at Metafilter. That's where I nicked the title of this post.  

In 2020 when it was hard to find toilet paper in stores, bidets became all the rage in private homes in the US. That wouldn't be possible without the technology that allows the device to be attached to an existing toilet. For hundreds of years, a bidet was something that Americans didn't use, and rarely spoke of, to the point that many people had never encountered one and did not know what they were used for, or how. Bidets were around in Europe long before plumbing was available, although they were only purchased by the upper class and sex workers. Once running water became common, bidets spread through the continent and other parts of the world. By then, Americans had either forgotten them, or considered bidets too foreign or too low class, due to their association with prostitutes.

Eventually, the US got indoor plumbing, but rarely installed bidets. Consider the above picture, from a 1912 ad for bathroom fixtures. We have a shower, sink, bathtub, what looks to be a sitz bath, and a foot-washing sink. You could clean a half-dozen children in there at once! But the toilet is in a separate alcove, with no bidet in sight. The manufacturer obviously thought of everything but a bidet. Or else they didn't think Americans would buy one, even as they tried to sell permanent sitz baths.

At any rate, the preceding paragraph is a departure from the actual history of the bidet, which you can read at Messy Nessy Chic.

(Top image credit: Antekbojar)

Normally, when someone wants to make an animated sequence these days, they just use computer software made for that purpose. If you want to go old school, you can draw individual frames, and people will be amazed at your persistence. Duncan McCabe took a much more difficult route, literally, to make a 24-second cartoon of a dancing figure.

Strava is a geolocation service that tracks where you've been on a map. The app is used by runners, hikers, cyclists, and even pilots to see their routes. Just making a recognizable shape is an accomplishment. McCabe planned his running to produce this cartoon figure, and changed it to make the figure dance. He selected maps from sequential runs he made from January to October of this year to produce a flipbook-style animation. Each run was about 10 kilometers, and took around an hour. Not the simplest way to dance, but the end result is pretty cool! In case you are wondering, yes, Strava has contacted McCabe about using the video. -via Born in Space 

Have you ever considered what a wide and varied pantheon of Christmas characters we have today? Look around your neighborhood and you'll see inflatables depicting Santa Claus, the Grinch, Charlie Brown, Nutcrackers, Elf on the Shelf, Scrooge, Rudolph, participants in the Nativity. Our customs have expanded, too, from Christmas trees to Advent calendars to snow globes to Christmas cards and another turkey dinner. Many of these traditions are newer than you might think, and many of them came about in the 19th century because of one person.

For example, many people are under the impression that Queen Victoria erected the first Christmas tree in England and started the custom. Christmas trees were a thing long before in Germany, and it was actually a different queen who brought it to England. Queen Charlotte, previously the German princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz before she married  King George III, who put up the first Christmas tree in Buckingham Palace in 1800. However, such a tree was only seen by the British aristocracy until Victoria made it all the rage when engravings of the family's 1848 Christmas tree were published.

Read about nine people who single-handedly brought us new Christmas customs that have become traditions at Mental Floss.

People who saw Violet and Daisy Hilton in a sideshow or performing on the vaudeville stage saw two smiling and well-groomed young ladies performing musical numbers. Their draw was that they were conjoined twins connected at the pelvis. What audiences did not see was the kind of lives the Hilton Sisters led.

Born in 1908 in Brighton, England, the twins' mother sold them to her employer, bar owner Mary Hilton, who saw the opportunity to make money off the sisters. She exhibited them in her bar, then at fairs and circuses. When the paying customers were gone, the girls were kept under wraps and treated as objects. When Hilton died, the "ownership" of Violet and Daisy was transferred to her daughter Edith and son-in-law Myer Myers. The couple toured with the twins, making thousands of dollars a week, while Violet and Daisy didn't see a penny, nor were they educated beyond what was necessary for their performances. When they finally broke free of the Myers, they were 23 years old and totally naive about directing their own lives and finances. That left them vulnerable to further exploitation, and as adults, they became fodder for tabloid gossip about their sex lives. Read the lucrative but tragic tale of Violet and Daisy Hilton, 1908-1969. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Progress Studio New York)

See also: Chained for Life, a feature film starring the Hilton Sisters.

In case you are avoiding the crowds at the Black Friday sales, sit back and learn something about how this Christmas shopping madness got started. Everyone knows the name Macy's because of the Thanksgiving Day parade, and from the movie Miracle on 34th Street. In fact, Macy's invented the concept of the "Christmas shopping season" by staging the annual parade. But that is far from the only retail innovation Macy's brought us.

These innovations included fixed pricing, pay as you buy, pricing in non-round numbers, Christmas window displays, and having Santa Claus right there in the store. Innovative and relentless promotion caused Macy's flagship store to grow to two million feet! That was 100 years ago; it's back down to a million now. Macy's bought up stores outside of New York that benefited from the name, peaking at around 850 stores in 2018. Since then, Macy's has cut back due to the decline of malls, but the brand is still synonymous with the heyday of department store shopping. -via Laughing Squid

It's a rather common practice for kindergarten teachers to ask students how to make Thanksgiving dishes. Chris Duffy has a friend who teaches a kindergarten class, and asks her students to collaborate on recipes. Then she prints up the recipes in book form every year. The above is the 2024 class recipe for stuffing/dressing. I'm not sure how much 200 meters of honey is, but I suppose it compliments the toppings.

Duffy also posted the recipes for turkey (which includes a decorative tent made of turkey bones), cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie at Threads. Other teachers and parents contributed recipes they saved from similar assignments over the years. -via Kottke

Anyone who has followed the development of artificial sweeteners knows the story is often the same. We go from "this is the greatest thing ever" to "this causes cancer" to "it only causes cancer in rats if they eat tons of it" to "this is not good for you for plenty of other reasons." This story isn't about artificial sweeteners, but it does evoke the confusion over food safety studies, regulations, and recommendations that swing from one extreme to another.

On November 9, 1959, the US government announced that some Pacific Northwest cranberries "may have been contaminated by a weed killer that could lead to cancer in rats." This was something the public wasn't used to hearing, as it was based on a new food safety law that has since been modified. Today, we would justify eating those cranberries by 1. reading the science studies, 2. checking where they were grown, 3. washing them, and/or 4. reminding ourselves that we only eat cranberries once a year. But in 1959, people were genuinely afraid. Cranberry producers across the country were upset because Thanksgiving sales would make or break their year. Politicians tried to assuage panic. But many Thanksgiving tables in 1959 just didn't have cranberry sauce. Read about the Great Cranberry Scare of 1959 at History.com.  -Thanks, WTM!  

Chef Alton Brown shows us the ways we should not prepare a Thanksgiving turkey, but which may appeal to a certain portion of internet users. He calls this "Hazardous Turkey Cookery for Adrenaline Junkies." In part one, above, he addresses the dangers of deep-fryinging a turkey and how to make that adventure somewhat safer. Then he attempts to cook a turkey by electrocution, which involves attaching electrical wires directly to the bird instead of putting it into an electric oven. The results are rather implausible. But in part two, he harnesses an actual cooking method from Norway.

Yes, he really cooked a turkey with molten glass. It seems a valid cooking method until you get into the details. How do you get the turkey out of the glass? When the glass is hot, you could burn yourself or leave drops behind. If you wait until it cools, you'll have glass shards in your food. You'll be pleased to know that no one actually ate the turkey cooked in glass for those exact reasons. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Update: It has come to my attention that there is a third installment in this series. Continue reading to see it. 

It's become somewhat of a national pastime to surf Zillow listings to look at houses for sale. Some do it to dream, or to see how the other half lives, while others do it to keep up with local property values or to peek into their neighbor's homes. We occasionally post notable or (more likely) ridiculous real estate listings. Now there's a Zillow pricing game in which you can put that surfing experience to work. I think it's called Fliphaus.

You will be presented with two simplified listings. All you get is the location, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and an exterior picture. You decide from that information which home is listed at a higher price. The game only runs until you get one wrong, but it's easy to restart. Meanwhile, you will be insulted for your error or score. And if you haven't been keeping up with the enormous variation in housing markets across the US, you will be shocked at the price differences. Or who knows? You might even find your dream house for sale. -via reddit

A thousand years ago, there was a city in Illinois that was bigger than London at the time. Cahokia had around 15,000 people, making it the biggest city in what later became the United States. It may have had large suburbs, too, because there were once plenty of manmade mounds across the Mississippi River that were bulldozed to build St. Louis. All that's left of Cahokia now are the mounds, which are now protected and studied, and open to the public, too.

Cahokia grew so large because it was a great location with fertile fields and a big river. But it didn't last. What led to the abandonment of Cahokia? It wasn't disease brought in by Europeans, as the city was declining 200 years before Columbus landed. It may have been crop failures due to drought, maybe it was war, or maybe its residents saw better opportunities elsewhere. It didn't die out suddenly, though. PBS introduces us to what we know about the ancient city of Cahokia.  -via Damn Interesting

As we gather together with family for the annual Thanksgiving feast, some of us are filled with trepidation over tensions between family members and the possibility of spoiling the occasion. After all, there are reasons we live so far away from each other and don't get together more often. Some families took that tension to extreme.

For example, a man named Dipendra went to a family party and killed his mother, father, brother, sister, plus his uncles and aunts and a cousin. He killed nine people that evening, and therefore became the king of Nepal because his was the royal family. However, Dipendra spent his entire reign in a coma because he also tried to kill himself. His surviving uncle then became the last king of Nepal because having a monarchy wasn't going so well.

Cracked tells us of five incidents when a family feast was the setting for murder. Three were mass killings, and the other two were single murders committed men who had caused plenty of other deaths. We hope your Thanksgiving with the family will be much more peaceful.

(Image credit: Nabin K. Sapkota)