You know what they say: Nothing succeeds like excess. When something works, you use it again and again, or even steal the idea from someone else. That's how trends start, and they keep growing until people can't help but notice. Book lovers scanning the shelves of their  local bookstore have already noticed, and now they are having trouble distinguishing one new book from another, because they all have that colorful blob cover. They even have a name for it: the Book Blob.

We've seen this happen before. If a romance novel has a shirtless man on the front, it is a bodice ripper. If it has a woman in 18th-century farm dress, it is a more chaste romance. What do these colorful blobs mean?

They are usually fiction and nearly always written by women, often women of color. They have literary sensibility but broad enough appeal to contend for the bestseller list; they’re the sort of books that generate a good deal of buzz and media coverage, likely candidates for an Oprah Book Club nod or a spot on a major literary prize’s shortlist.

All that also means they may be featured on multiple tables at the front of a bookstore. Read about this design trend and the factors that cause all book covers to look alike at Print magazine. -via Kottke

(Image credit: vadlmaster)

Not even considering a few gender reveal parties that have caused death and destruction, the entire custom is suspect. To be honest, no one outside the family cares whether your baby will be born a boy or a girl. Even inside the family, the importance of a baby's sex implies that one is preferable to the other, which can leave scars when someone's disappointment is seen in the video years later. If it's just an excuse to throw a party, there's nothing wrong with that, but there has been a tendency to make a big production out of the reveal in order to score internet points.

(Image credit: Lemongrass29)

Bored Panda has a gallery of images that reveal the cringe factor of gender reveal parties. Some mock the custom, some display truly bad taste, and some are downright disturbing. There are quite a few gender reveal cakes which are beautifully executed, yet show extreme gender stereotypes for the sake of an alliteration. See them all in this list.

This may have flown under your radar, but you don't see much of Ronald McDonald anymore. The McDonald's advertising mascot was everywhere in the 1980s and '90s, encouraging children to bug their parents about going to McDonald's for dinner. Today he's almost fallen off the radar, and is completely gone from advertising in the UK. Well, there was that rash of scary clown sightings, but that was in 2016. Ronald was gone from British advertising in 2014. So what happened to the clown?  

Attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery demonstrate that while Ronald has left our screens, he looms large in our memories. One media man who worked on McDonald’s UK advertising for three years simply said, “I don’t fancy being sued by a clown”. Aye Jaye, an LA-based former Ronald who wrote the official rulebook for playing the character (don’t hug kids, pat them on the back) said, “Unfortunately I’m not allowed [to talk]”. The co-author of a 1972 rulebook named Ronald and How, which warned Ronalds to never tell children that hamburgers are made of cows, also declined to speak, noting that he no longer has a copy of the book after returning his materials to McDonald’s upon his retirement.

So we are left to reconstruct the demise of Ronald McDonald in a roundabout way. It appears to be a confluence of a push for better nutrition for children, the reputation of clowns in general, and McDonald's drive to make their restaurants more upscale to appeal to adults. There have been few missteps along the way, which you can read about at Vice. Ronald is not quite as extinct in the US, which may have something to do with the prominent Ronald McDonald House charities. -via Digg

(Image credit: Simon Burchell)

It's been a few years since someone figured out you can create a picture by combining location tracking and an internet map, creating a genre called Strava Art. Fitness trackers show you where you've been and how far you've run or cycled. By planning a route, you can draw something really neat for internet points. We've seen few of these Strava Art images that go viral, but way more people do this than you ever realized. After all, runners and cyclists love a challenge more than anything, and this combines art with teh pohysical activity they were going to go through anyway. Gary Cordery has collected a ton of these Strava Art map images at his website Stravart.

You can look through images in different categories: people, plants, reptiles, cats & dogs, Christmas, fiction, words & numbers, etc. You can also submit yours, if this inspires you to make your own Strava Art. -via Boing Boing

The Schmid Peoplemover is an elevator/tram that takes you up, across, and down without stopping to change directions. Only three of them were ever put into service, and one has been closed since 2009 "due to economic reasons." Tom Scott went to another, at the Berlin-Rummelsburg Betriebsbahnhof train station. Its design is intriguing.

Tom also talked to its inventor, Emil Schmid, who explains that the peoplemover was built elsewhere and installed over the railway in only three hours! This device is cheaper and takes up less room than bridges with stairs, but it does have some drawbacks. One might assume that the closed Schmid Peoplemover was taken out of service to save money on power and maintenance. The ones that still run really make a difference for people in wheelchairs.

When the clock strikes midnight, weird things begin to happen in this house. The stuff on the walls begin to move, the furniture starts to dance, and monsters pop in from every corner! Kieron Rose went all out constructing his haunted house automaton. He submitted this video to the Facebook group Grayson's Art Club.

This has taken me nearly a year to build, all completely from scratch. Everything inside the room is 3d printed (apart from the ceiling light) and much of the mechanism is 3D printed too. It has 3 computers, 3 smoke machines (also 3D printed), 27 servos, 60 LEDs and 3000 lines of code. It's based on a 1940's haunted house working model by Bolland but mine is a lot more complicated and a third of the size.

I'm seriously impressed with the work that went into this. -via Everlasting Blort

In the early 1800s, New York City was fast outgrowing its infrastructure. The city's few wells were polluted, and the overworked water system spread cholera and other diseases. In 1837, the city began construction on an aqueduct modeled on those of ancient Rome. The Croton Aqueduct would transport fresh, clean water from the Croton River to Manhattan, a journey of 41 miles, completely powered by gravity. It was a massive project, starting with a dam and continuing to a bricked tunnel through the city's underground to reservoirs in what are now Bryant Park and Central Park. When the Croton Aqueduct went into service in 1842, it was cause for a citywide celebration.

Although it has been replaced by newer water delivery systems, Croton Aqueduct is still there. In the 1960s, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation bought 26 miles of the line in the city. The above-ground land is now a public trail, not very well known, but which offers an astonishing view of New York City.

Even more incredibly, above ground, the Croton Aqueduct became a nature trail and public right of way that follows the winding path of this long tunnel into Manhattan. It passes through people’s back gardens, grand mansions, and abandoned ruins; it bisects motorways, Main Streets and dense forests alike. In essence, to wander down the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail is to gain a behind-the-curtain glimpse of a New York that hardly anyone knows is there.

A preservation group also offers underground tours where you can see the bricks laid before the Civil War still standing as sturdy as ever. Luke J. Spencer takes us on a photographic tour of what the trail offers, plus a short history the Croton Aqueduct, at Atlas Obscura.

This house in southern California has been turned into a cinematic experience for Halloween! Enjoy Ghostbusters all over again, with familiar characters, multiple settings, special effects, and the theme song sung by jack-o-lanterns.  

Projection holiday decorations mean that you don't have to risk your neck hanging strings of lights, but getting it to look this good requires some serious programming. This Halloween light display is way more than anything you'll find in a discount store projection kit. The YouTube account is called Seasoned Projections, so I assumed it was a company that you could hire to do this. But no, from the comments it seems like the guy who did it is a projection enthusiast who produced this light show on his own home.

The short version, you draw a map of your house w/ a laptop and a projector. You bring the map file into software (I use Adobe After Effects and Photoshop) and you create various layers and masks based on your mapping. Creativity proceeds from there. You can do almost anything you dream up in Adobe After Effects. Once done, your finished rendered video is played on your house using a suitable bright projector and media player. Thats the quick version!

He directs people to a public Facebook group called Holiday Projection Mapping to learn more about doing this kind of thing yourself. -via reddit  

That is one giant sized chocolate bar! Swedish street artist Johan Karlgren looked at a broken concrete barrier in a parking lot and saw something in it- a Toblerone candy bar. A bit of paint, aluminum foil, some Perler beads, and we can all see it. He even recreated the huge notches that are now cut out of the chocolate bars.

Karlgren is often inspired by real places, which he turns into whimsical fantasies taken from video games, animation, or whatever is in the news. He goes through millions of Perler beads in the process. See more of Karlgren's creations at Instagram. -via reddit

Many of us learned in grade school that Christopher Columbus discovered America. We now know that's not true. How many people knew about the continents of the Western Hemisphere before Columbus landed in 1492? Well, there were the 60 million or so people who lived here. And Leif Erickson, who sailed to various parts of Canada, which he named Helluland, Markland, and Vinland. There is Greenland, which was known to Northern Europeans from antiquity but is only technically part of North America. And it turns out that the lands beyond the Atlantic were known to southern Europeans as well, as documented by a friar in Milan named Galvaneus Flamma. His unfinished written work Cronica universalis references "terra que dicitur Marckalada," in English, "the land that is called Markalada." The book is date to around the year 1345.

Galvaneus’s reference, probably derived by oral sources heard in Genoa, is the first mention of the American continent in the Mediterranean region, and gives evidence of the circulation (out of the Nordic area and 150 years before Columbus) of narratives about lands beyond Greenland. This article provides a transcription of the passage, explains its context in the Cronica universalis, compares it to the other (Nordic) references of Markland, and discusses the possible origin of Galvaneus’s mention of Markland in light of Galvaneus’s biography and working method.

Yeah, sailors talk, and it stands to reason that a lot of that talk would be about exotic faraway places they've either been to or heard about. Did Columbus know about Galvaneus’s document? Probably not, as it was never published. But did he know about Markland? Columbus was a sailor from Genoa, Italy, so he might have heard those same legendary stories from other sailors, or after an extra century, maybe not. Read the full paper at Terrae Incognitae, or the shorter excerpted version at TYWKIWDBI.

The movie No Time to Die is opening nationwide on October 8. It will be the final installment of the James Bond franchise with Daniel Craig as agent 007. Six actors have played the role so far, not counting David Niven in the 1967 non-canon spoof Casino Royale. Who has been the best Bond? That's all a matter of opinion. Someone said the best Bond is the one that was around when you were 13. That may be true, because I was gripped as a child by the adventures of Sean Connery, then as a teenager I enjoyed the humor of Roger Moore. The movies of the '70s were so over-the-top because of the ridiculous notion that movies could continue to be released with the same characters, tropes, and basic plots for years on end. It was a different time.

Each Bond is also a product of their time. Connery was a hero when the Cold War was hot. Moore came along when the sheer length of that Cold War gave us all a case of nihilism. And I've heard that Daniel Craig is a serious Bond for a serious time.

You might guess that George Lazenby ranked at the bottom, and you'd be right. He only lasted for one film. I haven't seen any of the more recent Bonds, so I have no real problem with the list, but you might. Check it out at Insider, and let us know what you think. -via Fark

I don't know if they still do it, but those paint flinging contraptions were pretty popular at school carnivals when I was a teenager. For a quarter, you could take home your own original piece of psychedelic art. I suppose they aren't as common as they once were, because Gav and Dan, the Slow Mo Guys, made their own. They also put the paper under the disc instead of on top, and added paint before the flinging begins. What's the fun in that? The fun is in their slow-motion videography, as we can see how paint moves and creates gloriously colorful swirls, globs, and messes. They way they spun the background to stabilize the view of the disc makes it much easier to see what's really happening with the paint. Cosmic.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, children died of diphtheria in astonishing numbers. Adults contracted the disease, too, but were less likely to die. The name of the disease is based on the Greek word for leather, because those infected developed a tough leathery buildup of dead cells in the throat that obstructed swallowing and ultimately, breathing. There was nothing anyone could do about the disease, until 1883 when a unique bacterium (Corynebacterium diphtheriae) was discovered in a victim's throat tissue. That discovery began a fascinating chain of event involving doctors and scientists living in far-flung nations. Years later, another doctor found that the bacterium did not cause the disease, but it produced a poison that did. Others used the toxin to create antibodies against the toxin, a trick learned from research on tetanus. This antitoxin would not stimulate a victim's immune system, but it could treat diphtheria, which is why Balto and many other sled dogs ran through Alaska in 1925. Eventually, a vaccine was developed by refining the antitoxin to stimulate a child's own immune system.

Today, diphtheria is almost unknown in the US, with only six cases recorded since 2000. There are only a few thousand cases worldwide every year, mainly in countries where the vaccine program has been disrupted. Read the amazing story of the 40-or-so year period when the race to defeat diphtheria brought the world of medical science together at Smithsonian.  

The origins of many property regulations come about because someone pushed the limits of common sense long ago. And we still see examples of someone flouting those regulations because the resulting buildings were grandfathered in, or may even be the cause of a certain regulation. We've read tales of spite houses, but there are more of these than you might know, as Mental Floss' latest collection shows. The grander a spite construction, the more likely it is to have survived, and the stories behind them can be fascinating. Mess with someone's property, and feel their wrath. A typical spite building is one built on a piece of land thought too small, due to government seizure of part of a plot or by a seemingly unfair inheritance. Or, in the case of the Montlake House, shown above, a divorce settlement.    

Whatever the origins of the wedge-shaped Montlake House in Seattle, Washington, built in 1925, spite is baked into its blueprint. According to one story, a woman walked away from a nasty divorce with an awkwardly-laid-out piece of land. Instead of leaving it empty like her ex-husband must have hoped for, she built a pie-slice-shaped home that fit perfectly onto the property. Another legend says that the structure went up when someone down the road offered to buy the land for an insultingly low amount. The owner got their revenge by erecting the odd building to block their neighbor's view. Today, the spite house—which is 15 feet wide on one end and 55 inches at the other, just wide enough for a door—is a treasured Seattle landmark. In 2018, it hit the market for $600,000. —M.D.

But it's not just houses. Or even hotels or castles, although those are included. There have been entire manufacturing companies founded out of spite, some that are now household names. There's also a sad tale that may be the origin of the phrase "cut off your nose to spite your face" in this mega-list at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Joe Mabel)

This sign, simply saying "Tom McCleod Slept Here," appears on Interest 5 near Bakersfield in California. There are no buildings nearby, and no people to ask about it. It's been there since at least 2009, when it was captured on Google Street View. People have written about the sign, but everyone has the same question. Who is Tom McCleod? SFGate looked into the mystery, and found an urban legend with no evidence to support it -which may have been made up on the spot. They also found four men named Tom McCleod. The four Toms had heard about the sign, and have seen it, but none ever slept near that patch of highway.   

The fourth Tom McCleod they got hold of lives in Texas, and provided about the only intriguing piece of information they ever got.

While he’s familiar with the sign on I-5, living on the border of Texas and Arkansas means he’s seen stretches of road that few Californians have driven.

And “Tom McCleod slept here” signs are in Texas and Arkansas, too, he says. Louisiana and Mississippi, as well.

But he has no idea who the guy is.

From that information, I have to believe that Tom McCleod is a sign maker. Or the pseudonym of a sign maker. Is this a "social experiment" or some kind of art? Could it possibly be advertising? It might just be a prank, one that others have emulated in other parts of the country. Read about the sign and the search for Tom McCleod at SFGate. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Flickr user Joe Mud)