Check out this image from a Zillow listing. When you have a huge golden dome on your house, it may be a little difficult to decide what to do with the interior. This looks weird overall, but I focused on the shiny wooden surface. At first I thought it was a table, but the way it aligns with the carpet leads me to think it's just a shiny part of the floor. Now, how fun would it be to remove the stair railing and make a game out of it? It would be like curling- just slide your little brother across that wood and see if you can chuck him down the stairs. Goal! 

This is just one of a collection of strange images from Zillow listings that Rebecca Makkai has collected over the past year or so. Most are like puzzles in that the more you look, the more details you find that make no sense. It's no wonder people wanted to sell these places. See 21 of these over-the-top rooms in the post, with a button at the bottom that implies you can see more if you sign up for notifications. -via Nag on the Lake 

Flightradar24 is an internet service that tracks aircraft flights all over the world. If a plane flies overhead, you can point your phone to it and pull up the aircraft type, the flight number, its origin and destination, and even its altitude and speed. You can also look up historical tracking information. Aviation enthusiasts rely on Flightradar24.  

Flightradar24 also has a blog, where they post aviation news, airport incidents, crashes and near misses, and general information. A recent post is titled Investigators release preliminary report on LEGO 747 and Space Shuttle crash. The LEGO Space Shuttle was being transported by the 747 when the accident occurred, which is described as "a kinetic encounter with a Felis catus." Accompanying photos show the crash site and debris field, as well as the alleged perpetrator. There is also a chart detailing the Owner/Operator Information, just as it would for any other crash. And 129 comments from aviation enthusiasts, including one urging an investigation by the FAA (Feline Accident Avoidance) and the NTSB (Never Trust Silly BlackCats). -via Metafilter 

Have you noticed that people who never talk about or even think about soccer (also known as football) are suddenly fans, or maybe even experts? This is particularly true of Americans, because North America is hosting the World Cup. There are also those who are soccer fans once every four years, when the World Cup happens elsewhere. Or the Olympics, when you find yourself wrapped up in women's gymnastics for a short time, but then switch to speed skating two years later. Meanwhile, you haven't paid attention to anything outside of baseball. Or maybe not even that. So many people only care about American football for one weekend in February, or horse racing on the first Sunday in May. If you don't keep up the rest of the time, it might be difficult to bluff your way through, as Ryan George demonstrates here. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

In case you aren't even trying, the 2026 World Cup comes to an end tomorrow when Spain and Argentina play at 3 Eastern Time.     

The last royal family of Russia were the Romanovs, headed by Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra, a German princess and granddaughter of Queen Victoria. They produced four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, and then finally a male heir, Alexei. But Alexei was hemophiliac, and it seemed like the Romanov dynasty was doomed. That was true, but it wasn't due to the lack of a healthy male heir. 

The Romanovs were great proponents of photography, and documented much of their family life in pictures. Official photographs were numerous, and stood in place of an accessible monarch. But they also took lots of private photos, which they guarded as fiercely as they did their private family life. Under pressure from revolutionaries, Nicholas abdicated the throne in 1917, and the entire family was killed in a sudden and particularly gory execution in July of 1918. The new Soviet government tried to find and destroy all images of the royal family that they could, but official photos were already available internationally, and six private photo albums were smuggled out of Russia soon after the executions. It was the last thing the family would have wanted, but those private photos are now public domain. See a selection of images from the private life of the Romanov family, along with their story, at Smithsonian.  -via Strange Company 

A group of first class domino experts got together to break a Guinness World Record. And they did, on June 20th, when they toppled a 3D pyramid containing 29,193 dominos. But would you believe that is about the least interesting part of this sequence? This 123,456-piece domino fall takes up a whole gym, and it's quite entertaining. 

There are lots of mind bending side quests, while the main line continues in a back-and-forth manner intended to give you enough time to enjoy the side quest without losing the point of progress. I had to go back and watch the pair of gummy bears again to figure out how they made them fall twice. There are a couple of places where an art piece did not entirely fall. That seems a shame, but maybe they were just setting the viewer up for the surprise duck. In between sequences, there are non-domino transitions that make this a truly Rube Goldberg contraption, and they often don't work the way you expect them to. After all that, the record-breaking pyramid didn't seem all that important, but overall, it's quite a ride. -via Born in Space 

In the 1980s, before everyone was on the internet, Japanese photographer Satoru Tsuda created a sensation with Namennayo cats (sometimes also called Nameneko). These cats dressed like high school gangsters and juvenile delinquents, among other characters, and posed rebelliously in elaborate miniature settings. They could be seen smoking in the boy's room, sneaking kisses, peeping into the girl's bathroom, showing off their motorcycles, and intimidating normal adults. Since they couldn't be passed around on the internet, these cat photos were purchased, and each sold in the millions. While that's about as viral as you could get in those days, Namennayo were little known outside of Japan.



Like Harry Whittier Frees almost a century earlier, Tsuda trained kittens from an early age to wear clothing specially designed for them, and posed them gently and patiently for short periods of time. Read about how Tsuda came to develop Namennayo and see more of these cats at Flashbak.  -Thanks, WTM!  

Yokai are a Japanese pantheom of supernatural folklore spirits that range from demonic to the beneficial. They include monsters, ghosts, and demons, which aren't always separate categories as they are in the West. Kitsune is the one you are most likely to run into today. 

Foxes are known for being cute and intelligent, so clever that it was easy to ascribe superpowers to them, which is exactly what happened in ancient Japan. The supernatural fox called Kitsune could be a mischievous prankster, a shapeshifter, a protector, a blessing, or a spirit that possessed humans, depending on the time and place. They are rarely 100% malevolent, but they can ruin your life in order to teach you a lesson. Kitsune can take a form of a beautiful woman, and in some cases even reproduce with humans to provide hybrid offspring or some form of Kitsune ancestry. 

Dr. Emily Zarka explain Kitsune, from ancient tales (with many tails) to modern depictions in pop culture, including a bizarre (and clueless) American plan for weaponing Kitsune against the Japanese during World War II. 

African penguins are a critically-endangered species, but the New England Aquarium in Boston has a thriving colony. These penguins usually live 10-15 years in the wild, but in the aquarium's protective environment, they can live to more than twice that age. Earlier this year, the aquarium designed a separate island as a geriatric ward, sort of a retirement home, for six penguins. Four of them are in their 30s, and two others, aged 29 and 14, were included because they are mates of the older penguins. The penguins are dealing with maladies like arthritis or cataracts that penguins in the wild rarely survive long enough to suffer. 

The new island separates the "retired" penguins from the more rambunctious younger birds, although they are still in sight. It is equipped with level mats that make it easier for older penguins to get around and to find their way despite poor eyesight. They also get world class medical treatment and nutritional supplements for their aches and pains. Read about each individual retired penguin and their new home in a press release. You can read more about meeting the penguins' medical needs at National Geographic, although you'll have to sign up for notifications to read it. -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: Vanessa Khan/New England Aquarium) 

We think of time as a constant, sometimes the only constant, in our lives. It's true that time seems to pass much more quickly as we get older, but that's just a matter of human perception. The way we measure time varies from place to place and from culture to culture, so we manage to confuse ourselves about it. Human perception of time can't always be trusted, but objective time isn't always constant, either. It's mind boggling how time itself can vary once you get away from the earth, whether it's merely on a mountaintop or in outer space. Chill Dude Explains (previously at Neatorama) gives us a list of ten anomalies in time, from the mundane and easily understood to the cosmic. There are no time machines here, just real examples of time distortion, or at least distortions in the way we understand time. The mispronounced word in this video is Byzantine. 

When the Vikings settled Iceland a thousand years ago, it had plenty of forests, but the trees were cut down to build homes and ships, and to clear the land for livestock. That led to erosion and poor agriculture. For centuries, the only wood available to build homes was driftwood. So people instead built homes using wood for only the roof supports and doors, and filled in the walls and roof with turf. These homes were innovative, and today would be called sustainable and charming, but they weren't what we'd call pleasant to live in. 

For one thing, if you had a decent-sized turf home, you were obliged to take in all family members, plus widows and other indigent people as servants. These all lived together in one room upstairs with the family's children. Downstairs, you might need to take sheep inside to gain a little extra warmth. Besides that, the turf tranferred moisture inside. They may be traditional, but when imported lumber became available, Icelanders rushed to replace their turf houses with wooden structures. This was not only for comfort, but to shed their reputation as uncivilized. Read about life in the turf houses of Iceland at JStor. 

The new movie Digger is the story of Digger Rockwell, a wealthy and powerful oil tycoon whose previous actions have set the world on a course of total environmental destruction. The character may remind you of any of a number of real people. Facing old age and possibly death, he decides he now has to save the world. The real kicker is that it's a satirical comedy.

You might not recognize Tom Cruise at all in the title role. The actor is 64 years old, and has taken some criticism in the past few years for continuing to portray much younger characters. He seems to have finally come to terms about playing someone his age, or older in this case. The movie also stars Jesse Plemons, Riz Ahmed, and John Goodman as the president of the United States. But we can tell right now that the real star of the movie is Digger's beloved cat. Digger is scheduled to open nationwide on October 2.  This trailer contains NSFW language. 

The United States declared its independence from the British Empire in 1776, but it was almost 90 years later that its enslaved people achieved their own independence. In France, the abolition of slavery started and ended earlier, but it came about in fits and starts. 

In 1789, during the French Revolution, Count Mirabeau of the new National Assembly declared that freedom should extend to all men, even the slaves in the French colonies of the New World. His suggestion was ignored, because the plantations of the Caribbean were just too lucrative. Then in 1794, enslaved colonists were not only granted freedom, but also citizenship. This only lasted until 1799, when Napoleon took over and rescinded those rights. Meanwhile, Haiti staged its own revolution and became independent in 1804. It wasn't until 1848 that slavery was permanently abolished in France, but they were still ahead of the US. Read how the French abolished slavery at the Conversation. 

As the Odyssey may be considered a sequel to the Iliad, the new film opening this weekend The Odyssey may be considered a sequel to the 2004 film Troy, at least by certain fans of the genre, even though the two movies are separated by more than 20 years and completely different casts and crews. At least the original poems were written by the same author. So in honor of the occasion, Screen Junkies goes back in the vault and gives us an Honest Trailer for Troy. 

Of course, they quickly focus on the overwhelming beefcake angle that the movie was so derided over. Give the audience what they want. There's plenty of bloodshed, too. When you've got this much sex and violence, you don't need much historical accuracy- or even literary accuracy. That said, you might want to go back and rewatch Troy before seeing The Odyssey this weekend. And then let us know how they compare. 

James Cameron wrote, produced, and directed Terminator 2: Judgement Day after announcing a 1991 release date. The movie was put together at breakneck speed, and the theatrical prints were delivered to theaters only the night before opening day. Now, if you recall, T2 had some pretty innovative special effects, especially the shapeshifting T-1000 that melted and reformed at will. 

Industrial Light & Magic only had about a dozen employees at the time, so the call went out to hire plenty of effects people. They were given the storyboards that showed how Cameron imagined the T-1000 passing through prison bars. They did not know how to do that. CGI was in its infancy, and the team figured they would have to spend millions on computers and storage to get it done. And they only had ten months. They did have the software that created the creature in The Abyss, but how would they transfer those tools to work with a real human? They ended up developing an early version of motion capture by drawing a grid on actor Robert Patrick's body and rotoscoping it. And that was just one of the problems they had to solve with 1990 technology. Read an oral history of how it all came to be from the effects team of the movie Terminator 2: Judgement Day. -via Metafilter

Passports as we know them are a relatively recent invention in the grand scheme of things. But travel documents of some sort have been around since ancient times. Whether those documents got you into a different country was often a crapshoot. Like many other systems, the birth point of the passport boils down to how you define one. And how you define borders, visas, and rules of passage. You might have guessed by now that the answer to the how and why of passports is war. The journey to the standardized passport was a long and crooked one, since nations don't like to be told what to do, yet most still want their citizens to have freedom of travel. Even today, passport rules are different depending on who you are and where you are going. Not only that, but the rules can change suddenly. Let's hope you are not sitting in an international airport lounge when that happens.