Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

The uncanny valley has babies

Another robot baby project to disturb you.  Meet Diego:

Game-destroying event called off

A New England town group called off its plans to destroy physical copies of computer games.  SouthingtonSOS had planned for a public event:

The Town of Southington will have a dumpster there for the collection of Violent Video Games, CDs and DVDs. As people arrive in their cars to turn in their games of violence, they will be offered a gift certificate donated by a member of the Greater Southington Chamber of Commerce as a token of appreciation for their action of responsible citizenship. Violent games turned in will be destroyed and placed in the town dumpster for appropriate permanent disposal.

They offer one big caveat:

SouthingtonSOS. The group’s action is not intended to be construed as statement declaring that violent video games were the cause of the shocking violence in Newtown on December 14th.

Why not do the game-trashing? It might be poor planning: "the original plans to distribute certificates would "create an unnecessary amount of logistical details for us"".  But SOS is happy nonetheless:

"Our mission was to create strong awareness in Southington for parents and families and citizens and children," said Fortunato, "and we accomplished that. Our other objective was to promote discussion of violent video games and media with children and with the families at the home. And we've accomplished that in spades."

(Fortunato!  I wonder if the fellow was extra-scared by Poe's "Cask of Amontillado.")

No mention of censorship in the group and town's discussion.  Nor any notes about witches, lotteries, or Hester Prynne.

Indie horror games

Here's a handy list of independent horror games for PC and Mac.

I haven't played any of them, so can't vouch for 'em, but also means there's more for me to explore.

(thanks to Todd Bryant)

Chas Addams doing Mother Goose

The Atlantic has a nice selection of Chas Addams' illustrations for Mother Goose stories.

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

Gothic headline of the week

On gun control, one opinion piece has this for a title:

Gun laws shouldn’t be written by ghosts

I thought Kaminer was going to write about dead victims, but instead speaks of precedents going back centuries.

The eerieness of abandoned amusement parks

There's nothing so melancholy and unsettling as an abandoned amusement park.  For example, in Germany.

and

(thanks to Thomas Burkdall)

Tuning the Earth for apocalypse

Another piece of Cold War Gothic comes from BLDGBLOG, who notes the US Project Sanguine.  It was a bigger version of what would become Project ELF.  Sanguine was to work like so:

the bedrock of the Earth itself... could be turned into a colossal radio station... an "immense subterranean grid".

Mad science, yes.  With a touch of the end times, given the total nature of thermonucler war:

transmitting to distant submarines by way of the Earth itself, humans using an entire planet as an apocalyptic radio device.

An afterimage of Tesla, tuning the Earth for his purposes, resurrected for the Cold War's last generation. 

Horror movies for 2013

Here's a fun list of recommended horror movies from the past year or so.

With delight I admit to not having seen any of them.

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

Psycho, alternative poster, round 2

Here's another imaginative Psycho poster, this time rendered as animated GIF:

(thanks to Michael's tweet)

Psycho, alternative poster

Here's a beautiful poster for Psycho (1960), imagined by Daniel Danger:

I love the way it integrates that classic Gothic house with a terrifying landscape, making Norman both powerful and small.

More horror film versions here.

(via MetaFilter)