Not quite things that make you go "hmmmm", but things that I thought were ultra-cool lately:

• Alan Taylor, a friend who writes the excellent Kokogiak, has come up with an amazing blog concept for Boston.com, where he works.  The Big Picture is just that, or rather, a selection of big pictures about a current news event.  It's stuff from the AP photos feed, but much, much higher-quality and more striking pictures, well-curated and assembled with a discerning eye.  Do check it out.
• Most. Awesome. Renovation. Ever. This NYT story made my jaw drop:

What Ms. Sherry didn’t realize until much later was that Mr. Clough had a number of other ideas about her apartment that he didn’t share with her. It began when Mr. Klinsky threw in his two cents, a vague request that a poem he had written for and about his family be lodged in a wall somewhere, Ms. Sherry said, “put in a bottle and hidden away as if it were a time capsule.”

And then the designer went a little nuts, and liberally salted the entire apartment with secret messages, hidden compartments, and obscure codes.  So cool.  (And check out the accompanying slideshow, too.)

• PBS host and guidebook writer Rick Steves recently went to Iran, and his pictures and blog posts about daily life there are fascinating.
• "The Symbols On My Flag (And What They Mean)"