The guy who goes by Backyard Racing has a large back yard and plenty of time on his hands. He spent four months and $9,000 building an enormous Hot Wheels track. Why? So he could strap a camera to some wheels and share a POV video with us! We soar through every corner of the property, including a leap through the air, a couple of underwater sequences, and loop-the-loops.

The effect of watching this is akin to going on a roller coaster ride without waiting in line or tossing your cookies. Keep your eyes on the tracks going around the turns and you'll know what I mean.

There is a planet nearby that is totally populated by robots. But we are going to Mars eventually, or at least of few of us humans will. Therefore, we have to consider all facets of human life as they might be played out on Mars, and that includes death. Sending a dead body back to earth would not be a priority, but what would happen to that body on Mars?

On earth, a dead body that is not embalmed eventually decomposes due to the effects of bacteria and other microbes, insects, fungus, scavenger animals, moisture, and weather. On Mars, there would be no other life forms besides those microbes we carry in our bodies, and the majority of those need oxygen to survive. They also need warmth, and Mars temperatures range from freezing to very much colder.

So what would happen to a deceased human on the red planet? Cremation would be an unnecessary expenditure in oxygen and energy, so burial is a sensible alternative, yet that doesn't mean ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Alison Klesman at Astronomy explains what would likely happen to a dead body in the Martian environment, and offers options for how to deal with it.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Kevin Gill)

Before social media, before iPhones, before YouTube, even, there was Homestar Runner. It was goofy and subversive, but it was funny and innovative. The experimental Flash animation didn't need any promotion because it had no competition on its level. It didn't need search engine optimization because it was shared granularly. If that sounds like jargon to you, what it means is that everyone liked Homestar Runner because it was weird and innovative, so people turned their friends and acquaintances onto it. This video takes a look at how Homestar, Strong Bad, and the other characters took over the early internet to the delight of all who explored the web back when you were desperate to find anything really worth the effort. It succeeded because it was fun, and fun was what we were looking for.

The cartoon survived the demise of Flash. As old (in internet terms) as Homestar Runner is, it's still there, even though the videos are now hosted by YouTube. -via Digg

Vanessa at Messy Nessy Chic presents twenty vintage books on liquor and how to prepare it. Some of them are connected with famous venues of the past, while others have wonderful titles such as So Red the Nose, Here's How to be Healthy, Wet Drinks for Dry People, and For Snake Bites -or Something. The covers are notable, too, as they tend toward Art Deco style.  

The oldest is The American Bar-Tender, published in 1874. The alternate title is "The art and mystery of mixing drinks, together with preservations on the quality of wines, liquors, and cigars, to which is attended several hundred toasts, patriotic, firemen's, political, lovers, sporting, etc."

A particularly intriguing volume is Giggle Water, a book published in 1928 New York during Prohibition that tells you how to ferment your own wine and other drinks at home. Many of the books are from the 1930s, when America needed to re-learn how to use legal liquor, instead of just guzzling what they could get.

You'll find an index of these books with links to read them in full at Messy Nessy Chic.

As we slide into October, we look forward to the Halloween season. It's not just a day anymore, because it take a whole month to watch all those horror films, not to mention planning our elaborate costumes, wearing them to parties, and then posting them on social media. Holiday traditions change all the time, but the Victorians celebrated in some weird ways. For example, young ladies of the time were obsessed with their future husbands, so they used Halloween for games that might predict their love life.

One such game involved a woman walking into a dark room, alone, and standing in front of a mirror. As they peeled an apple—try not to ask why that part was crucial—the woman might be able to see the reflection of the person they would someday marry. Alternately, they’d see a skeleton, in which case they’d die alone.

Another manner of speculation was to bake cakes containing a needle, thimble, dime, or ring. In addition to being an excellent way to choke or injure yourself, the cakes were believed to foretell marriage. A needle or thimble in your slice meant spinsterhood, since you’d apparently have plenty of time to sew; a dime or ring meant good fortune or wedding bells.

Playing games of romance at Halloween may be weird to us, but it's not any weirder than telling ghost stories at Christmas or trick-or-treating on Thanksgiving, which were both traditions in the past. The Victorians didn't have horror films, but they had parties, fancy ones with elaborate invitations and decorations, and even costumes of a sort. Read about seven Victorian Halloween traditions that contrast with the way we celebrate the holiday now at Mental Floss.

Can growing fungus be a beautiful thing? You betcha, but only under the right circumstances. Russian artist Daria Fedorova, who goes by Dasha Plesen professionally, uses petri dishes of growing bacteria, fungus, and slime molds to make art. She often adds inert objects to impede growth (like beads in the above images), or different nutrients to boost growth. It takes weeks to reveal what the finished piece will look like.  



Plesen says her art explores "the relationship between science, religion and art." The petri dishes are an example of nature taking its course while she sets up the conditions from above. They go through stages, but are ultimately ephemeral, surviving only through photographs.  



You must admit that these molds and fungi look much nicer in a petri dish than they do behind your sink. Read more about Plesen's work at Colossal. See more her creations at Instagram. -via Nag on the Lake

The map above comes from Rave Reviews, who crunched the numbers and ranked the most-hated brands in each nation. They have world maps of overall brands, game companies, and big tech companies, but what we all have in common are our feelings about major fast food companies, because we all eat, we are all occasionally in hurry, and the biggest brands are global. They got their data from Twitter, where it's easy for people to vent their frustrations and register their opinions.

As you can see, the most hated fast food company in the US is Domino's. It look like a lot of people are a Noid with the pizza outlet. It makes sense that Mexico hates Taco Bell the most, but I had no idea that Japan and Thailand also have Taco Bell, where they don't like it. Starbucks and Wendy's have a lot of enemies around the world, but the fast food brand that tops more nations hate list than any other is KFC, according to negative Tweets. Maybe it's because it sounds so good when you decide to go, but afterward you regret spending so much to ingest so much salt and grease.

Check out the complete article at Rave Reviews, where you can see a brand breakdown by each of the United States as well, enlargeable maps, and learn about their methodology. -via The Takeout

(Image credit: Rave Reviews/CC BY-SA 4.0)

When Charles Dickens wrote about the squalid poorhouses and workhouses of London, he barely scratched the surface of the horrors that befell poor people of the time. The poorhouse was the last resort for those with nowhere else to go, but it was the only social safety net available. In the 1850s, in Spitalfields, an area in London's East End, the Whitechapel poorhouse had grown so crowded that a new facility was built to house the children, separated from their parents' "bad influence." The new workhouse held up to 900 children at a time, and around 50,000 passed through it over the next 50 years.  

The Forest Gate District School, as it was officially known, was an institution of the kind sometimes called industrial schools, promoted as establishments that taught children trades to keep them from poverty in adulthood. But this was one of many lies. The average age of children was a little over ten years and official reports condemned the ‘industrial’ training as inadequate. In reality, children were employed as free labour – scrubbing acres of floors, peeling tons of potatoes and mending tattered garments – to save staff wages.

In 1875, Henrietta Barnett, wife of the priest and noted social reformer Samuel Barnett, was appointed as an unpaid governor of the children's workhouse. Appalled by conditions, Henrietta set about changing things, although she ran into resistance from the other governors and political figures. So she did the work herself, showing up at the school and insisting on humane treatment for the children. She opened up a smaller home where a dozen girls at a time could receive real training in domestic service. And she continued to work for government regulations that eventually ended up closing Forest Gate District School, although not before a couple of notorious disasters. Read about Henrietta Barnett and the children of London's largest workhouse at Spitalfields Life. -via Strange Company

One of the most famous haunted houses in America is on the market- again. If you'd like to live in Rhode island, the home at 1677 Round Top Road in Harrisville can be yours -for $1.2 million. The two-story, 3-bedroom home was built in 1836, and lies near the Massachusetts border. It comes with a bit of history, if you can believe it.

The true story of ‘The Conjuring’ started in this very house, in Harrisville, RI. The critically acclaimed original movie was based on accounts taken from inhabitants of this fourteen-room farmhouse. Rumored to be haunted by the presence of Bathsheba Sherman, who in the 1800’s lived in the house, 1677 Round Top Road is one of the most well-known haunted houses in the United States. The chilling stories from this house have inspired dozens of books and movies. Many qualified paranormal researchers have been invited into the home - most famously Ed and Lorraine Warren, who founded the oldest ghost hunting team in New England, and in the 1970’s were hired to rid the home of its evil.

The real estate listing goes on to say that the current owners rent out the home for parties and paranormal encounters, which they say continue to this day. The real mystery is the home's purchase history. When a house truly terrifies its owners, they often sell at a loss, but this house's price has bounced between extremes. In 2012, the house was listed for $64,900. In March of 2013, it sold for $25,000, but there's a note of a "price change" in December to  $49,900. It went on the market again in 2015, but was not sold. In 2019, it was purchased for $439,000, but then was listed in 2020 at only $69,900. The ridiculous explosion in real estate prices might explain some price increase, but the current price is thirty times what it was listed for last year! For reference, The Conjuring came out in 2013, which may have something to to with that "price change." See the real estate listing here. Get more details of the Warrens, the couple behind The Conjuring, and other paranormal investigators connected to the house at Boing Boing.

The 355 is an upcoming movie about a ring of female spies. It's set in the present time, but the unit was named in honor of a brave yet mysterious spy from the American Revolution. Agent 355 was so undercover that the public never learned her name even after the war was over. Nor after her death. Nor 200 years later. We still don't know who Agent 355 was, but we know that she was a woman. As such, she was able to glean and relay information on the British forces to the Continental Army without drawing suspicion. The redcoats didn't consider a woman capable of spying against them. They may not have ever thought about it at all.

Agent 355 was part of the Culper Ring of spies, a unit that was so secretive that its existence only became known in the 1930s, despite being organized by George Washington himself! We can only imagine what it would have been like to risk life and limb for an army of rebels fighting the British Empire, and then keep your contributions to yourself for the rest of your life. Were her exploits considered inconsequential to the Founding Fathers? Or did she prefer to remain anonymous? It's possible she stayed undercover in case she would be needed again. While we don't know who Agent 355 was, there are many theories on who she could have been. Read those theories and find out more about colonial spying at Messy Nessy Chic.

(Image credit: Harper's Weekly)

In the 1960s, the Soviet MIG-25 was a mystery. US military forces and the CIA were intrigued by its design, and thought it would be the epitome of maneuverability with those long wings. The aircraft set speed and altitude records, but no one outside the USSR knew what was in it. The plane even had a destruct button that pilots were instructed to push in case they ever had to eject and abandon the plane, lest it fall into foreign hands.

Lieutenant Viktor Ivanovich Belenko of the Soviet Air Defense Forces shocked the world when he went on a regular practice drill in 1976 and just took off in a MIG-25. It was a daring escape he had planned for a long time. Belenko landed in Japan intending to defect, but the authorities back home were much more concerned with the plane than they were with Belenko. They demanded their plane back immediately. Read the story of the pilot who just took off with the mystery plane at Amusing Planet.   

(Image credit: Leonid Faerberg)

Only a few decades ago, you could go into the biggest supermarket in town and find only two or three kinds of apples: red delicious, golden delicious (maybe), and Granny Smith. The delicious apples went into the children's lunch bags, and the Granny Smiths made an apple pie. Now supermarkets are much larger, and you'll find a dozen or more varieties of apples. Some are new hybrids, while others are heritage apples from hundreds of years ago, the result of tracing varieties back to their roots or searching for historic trees. 

Doing your own taste test could be fun, but keeping single apples labeled correctly might be difficult, and some must be bought by the bag. Therefore, Thrillist did the work for you, and ranked the 18 most common varieties of apples by their taste. As you might have guessed, the red delicious ranked at the very bottom. They may be red, but they are only delicious to children who don't know how an apple should taste.

There are probably quite a few apples you've never heard of on the list that might be worth seeking out. And there are many varieties that don't appear on the list at all, because they may be only available in certain areas for a limited time. But trying a new variety is the perfect way to celebrate the last few days of September, which is Apple Month. You'll also learn a few tidbits about apples, like who Granny Smiths were named for.

-via Metafilter

(Image credit: Dllu)

Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), this chart shows which jobs will be growing over the next ten years and which will be declining. Once again, "blogger" doesn't show up anywhere, because people still can't believe anyone makes a living at this. But the chart doesn't show us anything we couldn't have figured out on our own. While the job expected to grow the most is wind turbine service technician, understandably, the top ten growth jobs are dominated by positions in health care, which vary widely in expected income.   

Visual Capitalist lists the top twenty jobs that will expand the most in the coming decade, but you have to look at the details. Wind turbine technician got the #1 spot because the position will expand by 68%. But that's only 4,700 jobs, because we have very few of those professionals now. Jobs for home health and personal care aides will expand by more than a million jobs, yet that's only a 32% change. And when you're counseling a young person on what profession to go into, take note that home health and personal care aides do not make much money at all. A nurse practitioner can make four times as much.

The twenty jobs that will decline the most are no surprise. Secretaries and typists aren't in demand when everyone uses a computer. I'm surprised that there are any telephone operators left at all. See the full lists and statistics on these careers at Visual Capitalist. The chart is much larger there.

By the way, this projection excludes those occupations that went through a tremendous swing due to COVID-19, like restaurant workers and movie production. -via Digg

Author Kurt Vonnegut lived on Cape Cod in the 1960s, and so was following the news of the Cape Cod Cannibal with interest, and even writing about the crimes. Four young women had gone missing in 1968 and '69, and while searching for two of them, police found a third. Ultimately four mutilated bodies of young women were uncovered the same area. Police arrested Tony Costa, which drew Vonnegut further into the sensational crime. His 19-year-old daughter Edith knew Costa. Costa had even invited her to come see his marijuana patch, a line he used with many young women.   

Luckily, Edith never took Costa up on his offer, but it wasn’t because she thought he could be dangerous—Edith believed Costa was strange but harmless. Most of the area residents did, too. Despite his run-ins with the law and heavy drug use, Costa was well-liked by many in the community, especially children. He was a fun and friendly babysitter to the local kids whose parents were either too busy or too apathetic to care for their kids during the hot and hectic days of summer.

Which is why so many area residents were shocked to find out Costa was a cold-blooded killer, including Edith. “‘If Tony is a murderer, then anybody could be a murderer,’” Vonnegut reports Edith told him during a phone conversation.

Read up on Tony Costa, Kurt Vonnegut, and the Cape Cod Cannibal crimes at Mental Floss.

Sweet, tropical, and refreshing, the piña colada is a gift to the world from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Which made it worth a weeklong vacation business trip to the island to track down its origins. There are several stories: the drink is the result of a competition at the Caribe Hilton‘s Beachcomber Bar in 1954, that a different bartender there came up with it, and that another bar, Barrachina, is the original home of the piña colada. The name, at least, is even older than those claims.

Before the piña colada became the piña colada, the phrase, which translates to “strained pineapple,” was used in Cuba to indicate a nonalcoholic drink of strained, sweetened pineapple juice, optionally with coconut water. The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails even notes that there were piña colada stands in the U.S. in the 1930s. “At least one American journalist suggested the obvious, that the standard pineapple-coconut drink might easily be turned into a ‘grand rum cocktail’ (this was in 1944) … but not until the late 1960s did the alcoholic version become the default one, and then it came as a Puerto Rican import,” Curtis writes.

In 1978, Puerto Rico named the piña colada as its official drink, and a year after that, “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” made its glorious debut. Was I the only one who thought that was a Jimmy Buffett song? It’s by Rupert Holmes. Anyway, in more recent years, the Puerto Rican government has formally recognized Marrero as the inventor and the Caribe Hilton as the laboratory of its creation.

This article on piña coladas is more than a history of the drink, though. It's also a love letter to the piña colada and a primer on how to make a better one. -via Digg