Massive lava tubes under the surface of the Moon and Mars could be prime real estate for future offworld habitats. "With heights that dwarf Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, and 'skylights' as big as football fields," the formations could contain small cities protected from solar radiation, reports LiveScience. According to a new study [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/lunar-and-martian-tunnels-coul.html

In 1991, four developers created the original Mortal Kombat, a fighting game that upset adults because of its ultraviolence before growing into a massive media franchise. The characters were digitized sprites (two-dimensional bitmaps) based on the above video recordings of live actors kicking, punching, jumping around, and walking on a treadmill. It wasn't until Mortal [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/799995.html

Night one of the Democratic National Convention closed out with this highly stylized and dead-on-for-our times rendition of Buffalo Springfield's 1966 protest anthem For What It's Worth.

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/billy-porter-and-stephen-still.html

What if Solo: A Star Wars Story starred a young Harrison Ford? It would make perfect sense in a timeline where Ewan McGregor played Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope:

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/a-young-harrison-ford-stars-in.html

Hardly exciting news in 2020! Someone has been diagnosed with the plague in South Lake Tahoe, CA. Last seen in nearby Yosemite National Park, bubonic plague is spread by fleas that ride on rats and mice. LA Times: Health officials have confirmed a case of plague at South Lake Tahoe — the first in California [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/california-reports-first-bubon.html

Yello's "Out Of Sight" will give you Max Headroom flashbacks if you're of a certain age. Or maybe Right Said Fred, or maybe, if you are a total 80s kid, you will know the Swiss duo by name for their immortal contribution to Ferris Bueller's Day Off and many other soundtracks. Ohhhh yeah! Image: YouTube [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/glitchy-fruits-and-people-abou.html

Again, everything old** is new again. Now we've got a remake of John Hughes' Plane, Trains, and Automobiles which will pair Will Smith and Kevin Hart. The original 1987 road-buddy comedy starred Steve Martin and John Candy. Variety: The remake will be a modern update of the original, with Smith and Hart playing characters who [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/will-smith-and-kevin-hart-to-s.html

South Korea in general and Seoul in particular has attracted a wave of prominent architects, and photographer Ekaterina Busygina captured some of the incredible diversity: MVRDV's The Imprint, a dual structured entertainment facility, sits as the center piece of a new tourist hub in Seoul, South Korea. The sibling buildings, the Wonderbox and Nightclub, share [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/ekaterina-busygina-took-these.html

Something exciting is happening at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. Its massive Amorphophallus titanum, aka corpse flower, is in bloom! Catch "Terra the Titan," as they've named it, on their livestream while you can. The flower, which is known to bloom every seven to 10 years or so, will only be open for roughly [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/rare-terra-the-titan-corps.html

American DJs Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight from Odesza teamed up with Australian DJ Golden Features (aka Thomas George Stell) to form Bronson, and they are coming out of the gate with "Keep Moving," complete with a fabulous video by StyleWar. The video takes dreadful corporate stock footage tropes and turns them even more nightmarish [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/bronson-repurposes-corporate-s.html

Instagrammer mimles does some impressive optical illusions on her own face, but this is impressive even by her high standards: she turned her own head upside down. Scroll through her post to see how she did it. Another post includes a video that shows how real it looked live: Image: Instagram / mimles

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/check-out-how-this-makeup-arti.html

Maybe the next next Bill & Ted movie can have Evil Robot Bill & Ted go back in time across dimensions to try and stop these two auditioning for the movie in the first place (then our Bill & Ted obviously have to go back and stop them, and then the robots end up performing [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/watch-alex-winters-and-keanu.html

Say what you will about the British Royal Family, but Queen Elizabeth II has excellent taste in movies. In a recent article published by The Guardian, Brian Blessed, actor and goddamn international treasure, is said to have stated that The Queen's favorite movie is the 1980 sci-fi touchstone, Flash Gordon. In the film, in Blessed [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/the-queen-of-england-frigging.html

SungWon Cho makes a strong argument (jokument?) that the heel turn of videogame characters is telegraphed too crudely. On the other hand, this is every NPC you ever met in an Elder Scrolls game, and some of those guys turned out fine.

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/meeting-a-transparently-villai.html

Allen Pan decided to make a gun that would shoot a mask onto a maskless face. Unless it gets declared a Second Amendment matter, it may be a while until this medical weaponry gets regulatory approval. Because the Venn diagram of West Coast anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers has a high overlap, he took his invention to [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/guy-invents-mask-gun-to-shoot.html

Just a few months ago, walking into a supermarket or convenience store with your head and face completely covered would have seemed&strange. Now, wandering aisles full of masked and hidden fellow shoppers is entirely commonplace. We're all in a brave new world — and while mask life appears like it will be a part of [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/this-baseball-cap-style-full-h.html

Former First Lady Michelle Obama's necklace during her Democratic National Convention speech reads: V-O-T-E If you look closely, Michelle Obama's necklace reads V-O-T-E pic.twitter.com/5V5LfujLnW  philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) August 18, 2020 Michelle Obama on Trump: 'Clearly in over his head'

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/17/secret-message-on-michelle-oba.html

The agency that runs the electrical grid in California has warned state residents that some 3 million homes may be subjected to rolling blackouts to manage the surging energy demands caused by an ongoing extreme heat wave. Death Valley, CA saw a high of 130 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, a record temperature, and a bad [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/17/rolling-blackouts-warning-for.html

“It is what it is.” — Michelle Obama

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/17/michelle-obama-on-trump-cle.html

The Financial Times reports that Larry Ellison's Oracle has entered the race to acquire TikTok. The short video sharing social media app is Chinese-owned, under attack by Donald Trump, and is also being pursued by Microsoft. A group is reportedly working with investors on behalf of Oracle in an effort to outbid Microsoft after the [&]

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/17/larry-ellisons-oracle-wants.html