The startup Galactic Resource Utilization Space (GRU) has launched a website to take reservations for a hotel on the moon. No, the hotel is not on the moon yet, but the plan is to have it in place by 2032. Availability dates will be subject to transportation, and of course, whether the hotel is ever built. Or we should say, installed, because it's going to be an inflatable structure. It will hold up to four people for multi-day vacations, which may include sightseeing, driving, and golf. Talk about an "out of this world" honeymoon! 

GRU is the brainchild of Skyler Chan, a 21-year-old Berkeley graduate, who has enlisted tech investors such as SpaceX and Nvidia. A big chunk of money is expected from the guests, though. Reservations range from $250,000 to $1 million, depending on the vacation package. What's in those packages? Who knows- it costs $1,000 just to apply for a reservation. It sounds like pie in the sky, although that metaphor seems a little too on the nose. -via Nag on the Lake 

Shane Martin has a construction business in Cobar, NSW, Australia. He arrived at his shopfront to find the glass shattered in the door and three windows. Was someone trying to break in? He watched the security footage and saw a feral goat head-butting the shop for about 20 minutes straight! 

They say all the wildlife in Australia is trying to kill you. However, goats are not native to Australia, but are an invasive species imported by humans. Maybe the environment has affected their instincts. The goats around Cobar usually stay near the reservoir, but dry conditions could have caused this one to roam into town. Martin surmises that the goat probably saw his reflection as a rival that needed to be challenged. The goat hasn't been found, and Martin is left with thousands of dollars in damage. You can see video footage of the goat attack at ABC News.  -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: Shane Martin)

At the end of World War II, Walt Disney thought his animation company might be on its last legs, so he was looking for something different. An amusement park? Okay, but it had to be better than what other amusement parks had to offer at the time. The design of Disneyland was an entirely new concept, with architecture created to immerse visitors into a fantasy world. And people would have to pay to get in, which was unheard of at the time. 

The story of Walt Disney World in Florida is pretty astounding, since it is so much bigger and has more features, but in pulling off that first park in 1954 was a bigger risk. Disney invested his personal fortune, and took out $17 millions in loans. The park was built in only a year! But no one knew whether it would go over with the public. Well, we know now, but it was a white-knuckle experience for Walt Disney. Too bad you can no longer get in for a dollar. -via Damn Interesting 

The grandeur of the Pokémon universe began thirty years ago and Japan is celebrating the franchise. Sora News 24 tells us that a permanent Pokémon theme park is opening in Tokyo. It's called Poképark Kanto.

It consists of two sections: Pokémon Forest, where visitors will be able to encounter Pokémon in natural environments, and Sedge Town, which consists of attractions aimed at the needs of trainers.

A few promotional photos are available. They show this lovely carousel ride with your favorite pocket monsters. You'll be able to ride it starting on February 5 with the grand opening. But demand for tickets is so high that the park managers have a lottery system for visits up through March.

"Yeah, I know how stupid this is. But it had to be done."

No, Aaron Christophel is far, far from stupid. His project is intelligent and thoughtful. What if you want to play Doom but only have access to a Krups Cook4Me electric cooking pot? Christophel provided detailed instructions on which steps you need to take.

If I understand him correctly, Christophel has arranged his Doom porting in such a way that a person must complete the game in order to again use the cook pot for cooking food. That's motivation to kill the demons and secure final victory!

-via Hack A Day

This gentleman on the Chinese video hosting app Bilibili plays the erhu--a two-stringed bowed instrument. It produces excellent fiddle music as aptly demonstrated with the American folk song "Dixie." The erhu's vibrant notes transport us to a land of cotton for old times there are not forgotten.

-via Orikron, who imagines the song as authentically Chinese had the Ming dynasty had not closed off private maritime trade in 1371.

Can I tell you how to get to Sesame Street? Yes, but I assure you that you should go as a tourist. You do not want to actually live there. The residents are freaks. And I don't mean just their physical features, but also their behaviors. Comedian Ross Snow depicts life as a normal person on The Street.

This is Snow's schtick. He's also depicted an insurance adjuster on Stranger Things, what Gordon Ramsey would be like as a child, and a realtor trying to sell your Sims house. Perhaps we're all better off on this side of our screens instead of these fantasies.

In 1860, New York City seriously considered leaving the United States and forming its own country. The mayor, Fernando Wood, consulted with the city's movers and shakers like William Astor, August Belmont, and Sam Tilden about the plan, which they considered would be peaceful. Their problem was not so much with the United States, but with the state of New York- the city had a completely different culture from upstate. New York City was focused on trade, and consisted of people from all different cultures. They saw the rest of the state as populated by New England "Puritans," who were too religious, monocultural, and intolerant -especially when it came to alcohol. Strangely, most city authorities had no problem with slavery, because of the trade thing. 

New York City's plan to secede from the Union was stopped short by the Civil War, but the rift between city and state continued for more than a hundred years. Read about the Big Apple's desire to secede at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: Samuel Augustus Mitchell) 

To celebrate the anniversary of the 2001 movie The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, it's returning to theaters starting January 16th. The Two Towers will be released on January 17th, and The Return of the King hits theaters on January 18th. If you're in the right place, you can spend 12 hours of your weekend watching the trilogy. Yes, these are the extended editions, which makes The Fellowship of the Ring three hours and 48 minutes long. And it's the perfect excuse for an Honest Trailer. 

While Screen Junkies gently pokes fun at the characters, it's obvious they can find little fault with the movie. We do get to see some of the tropes pointed out, like how Frodo is constantly interrupted while trying to sleep. It's no wonder he never thought of just flying to Mordor like Gandalf did. At any rate, you can expect Honest Trailers for the other two films in the trilogy to come out soon.  

Isn't this little fighter jet cute? It is less than 15 feet long, and it has a wingspan of 21 feet. But those wings fold up, making the plane even tinier. This is the McDonnell Goblin XF-85 parasite fighter jet, developed during World War II. See, American bombers got bigger and bigger, and could fly missions further and further away. But they needed protection from fighter escorts, and those escorts could not carry enough fuel for long-range missions. So the Goblin was developed small enough to fit inside a bomber! 

When approaching a target area, the Goblins would be deployed from underneath the bomber, which must have looked like the jet was giving birth. What was really tricky was retrieving and stowing the Goblins after a mission. After all, the little jets didn't have the fuel to get back on their own, and they were too compact to carry landing gear anyway. Read about the Goblin XF-85 at New Atlas. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: US Air Force) 

The Awesomer properly labels this familiar if unsettling movement: like a life-size living bobblehead doll.

Callytrappy is a trap dancer. He moves his body rhythmically and robotically to the music deep in the uncanny valley between a human and an android.

I'm especially impressed with his capacity to refrain from blinking, sometimes for entire videos. The visual effect is like an animation glitch.

Depression is a horrible malady that's often hard to pin down. Situational depression is when you feel awful with a reason, like personal loss, trauma, or the world is falling apart, and clinical depression is a mental illness, but these lie on a spectrum and it's hard to determine where the line is. Medical science has some standards for diagnosis, but they can be subjective. There are no biological injuries that point out clinical depression, and treatments vary in effectiveness from person to person. Still, the worst is no treatment at all. 

Adding to that, the very symptoms of depression make it hard to seek help. Then there's the stigma and expense attached to treatment. Sure, there are a few things you can do to fight depression, and those things are healthy whether you are experiencing depression or not. But it's very important to recognize the symptoms and seek help if you or someone you know is suffering from depression, no matter what form it takes.  -via Geeks Are Sexy 

It never occurred to me to try frying foods in a microwave, and it sounds kind of dangerous. Frying means oil, and oil gets extremely hot. But it is possible. So what would you fry in there, anyway? The Takeout explains that you might want to fry garnishes until they are crispy, like fried onions to put on your salad or a sandwich. That way, you can use a small amount of oil and a small dish for a small amount of food and not have to wash a frying pan. They also explain the proper way to do it. Just be sure that you avoid splashing any oil as you remove the dish from the microwave. 

But microwave frying will only work for a small amount of food- you won't get good results frying chicken in the microwave, for more reasons than one, which they also explain. But who fries just one piece of chicken at a time, anyway? Entrees for a family are worth pulling out the frying pan. Get a rundown on the practical way to fry some things in the a microwave at the Takeout.  

(Image credit: Famartin) 

Small arrowheads have been found in South Africa that date back 60,000 years, tens of thousands of years older than any other known poison arrows. What's even more intriguing, the traces of poison recovered from them are from the plant known as the Bushman's poison bulb (Boophone disticha). The poison extracted from the plant does not kill quickly, but will weaken prey over time. The small arrowheads indicate that they were made to deliver the poison instead of killing an animal outright. Such an arrow would slow the animal down, though, giving human hunters the advantage of their endurance and perseverance in taking down large prey. 

The implications of this technique are that early Homo sapiens hunters were strategic thinkers who understood cause-and-effect and delayed results, in addition to the practice of using poison to their own advantage. Read about the discovery and what it means at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: Ton Rulkens) 

It looks like a storefront in a stripmall in suburban America, but Big Iowa BBQ is in Tokyo.