Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Infocult travels to the Bay Area, and real-life Gothic follows in my wake: dead body found on fire in Oakland.

The class aspects are interesting.

(thanks to Ryan Brazell)

Creepy doll 1.0

Before Little Talking Tina there was Edison's Phonograph Doll. She's a tin doll, with a tiny wax cylinder inside:

(via MetaFilter)

Best idea for reality tv show

I've been resisting the Casey Anthony story, but can't resist this fun imagining from Jim Kunstler:

The court of public opinion is going to lay a million-dollar book deal on Casey Anthony, and a Made-for-TV movie deal, and a "reality" show on the Food Channel ("101 Meals You'll Never Have to Serve To Your Annoying Child Because You Killed It")...

Town in ruination

Gothic spaces under construction: the Turkish town of Hasankeyf is being turned into underwater ruins.

It's "a Bronze-Age-era town", and about to be wrecked by a new dam.

Open wide for the uncanny valley

In a very Infocultist move, one dental school is using human-like simulations to teach dental work.  And these sims are actually based on sex dolls.  Yes:

one of Japan's top sex doll makers, Orient Industry, was brought in to help design and craft realistic skin, tongue and mouth areas.

The jokes really just tell themselves, don't they?

"We think it's OK for people to be tense while training, and to make mistakes, because, well, this is a robot."

"We considered the motions of the tongue and mouth lining separately."

Showa Hanako 2 has several major upgrades over her predecessor, Showa Hanko 1, for example, her skin is now made of silicone rather than PVC and she moves much more realistically.  

Geocache goes creepy

The many ways of fearing mobile devices keep unfolding. This week's example concerns geocaching in Britain.

Here's a familar story:

[S]omeone working in a café spotted a man acting a bit suspiciously on the street.

He appeared to have a small plastic box in his hand and after fiddling with the container he bent down and hid it under a flower box standing on the pavement. He then walked off, talking to somebody on his phone.

Karen Brittain, whose café door is just a few feet from where the container was left on 1 July, was alarmed by the man's behaviour and called the police, who then sealed off the area...

(via /.)

Tweet of the day

From the real-world Gothic Twiitersphere:

Great way to start the week: On phone with F'burg police because I saw a human skull on Falmouth bridge this morning. Yep, that's right.

Writing prompt of the year!

Infocult: helping you see the skull beneath the skin.

(via Language Lab Unleash'd)

Go to hell with Eminem and a new game

A new Facebook game lets you play your way to hell, thanks to Eminem.  Bad Meets Evil is a fighting game, plus clothes store, and music shop, anchored on a new album.

You work your way through a depressing part of town, which could be Detroit, trying to kill people, grin evilly, and grab money by breaking things.  Your negative karma builds up, letting you advance by levels until Hell itself is accessible.

Naturally there's a mechanism for spending real-world money to boost your infernally-oriented powers.

(thanks to Todd Bryant)

Atomic Gothic

Decommissioned atomic energy plants offer a powerful Gothic impression.  Marble Hill is a good example, with its decayed walls and mighty presence.

Pigeons roosted near the ceiling of the remaining containment dome, an empty temple, its altar dismantled. 

Like something from one of the former Biosphere sites, the endless batteries of cooling towers were dingey, deteriorating, damaged by the elements, but gloriously accessible: in each cooling battery, a simple catwalk traversed an array of plastic vanes and half-assembled convection fans the length of four football fields.

 
Nuclear Carcasses (great name!) looks like a fine project.

(thanks to Andrew Connell)

By "total ban" we meant something different

Maybe that upsurge in internet fear we mentioned yesterday won't come about.  The anti-porn leader now says he intended something other than what he wrote:

 Today, he claimed, “We are not calling for a nationwide band [sic] on pornography,” and that the pledge is really intended “to imply opposition to women being forced into pornography or prostitution.”

What made the difference, conversations with lawyers, or rebellion from staff?