Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Another tale of kidnapping, cannibalism, and a dungeon

From Infocult's files of real-life Gothic horror in the news:

Geoffrey Portway had a dungeon in his basement where he planned to sexually abuse, murder and cannibalize a child, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Portway allegedly planned this out, but hadn't taken any steps.

Except for one.

Zombie banks reaching from the grave

A demolished American bank sues a still-living company. Or, as Ars Technica so Gothically puts it,

Zombie corpse of Lehman Brothers sues Intel 

More:

even dying giants have some fight left in them: the slowly decaying remains of what was once Wall Street's fourth-largest investment bank have filed suit against Intel because of a billion-dollar deal gone bad.

This meme is quite durable, having last years through a very manic media spin cycle.  Why do we love our zombie economics so much?  

This Lehman-Intel case points to one reason: the sheer destruction of 2008, especially in the United States.  So much wealth disappeared, and so many giants fell that we're still processing it.  Moreover, the subsequent "recovery" has been so weak that we can't easily shake off the five-years-old disaster.  On top of this, we now have the 1%/plutocracy meme, which had been submerged in American popular culture for a very long time.  This gives us an opening for monstrosity, and the economy's current status doesn't argue for vigorous creatures.

(thanks to Randy McCall)

Children are masters of horror

Here's a fine bit of creepiness: a crowdsourced list of scary things little children have allegedly said.

Samples to stir your dreams:

My 5 year old at the time had night terrors and would scream in her sleep. One night I said "mama's here its okay". She looked right at me still asleep and screamed "mama? But who is that behind you?"

My daughter said to me that there is a woman who watches her watch movies in her room and sleeps on the ceiling above her bed when she sleeps. she also says it dose not like me and wants to eat my heart. my kid watches elmo and fucking dinosaur train. where in the hell did she get this from?

More:

Cannibalism at Jamestown

Historians have determined that cannibalism occured at the Jamestown colony in early America.  Yes, things were that bad.

The Washington post's article open like so:

The first chops, to the forehead, did not go through the bone and are perhaps evidence of hesitancy about the task. The next set, after the body was rolled over, was more effective. One cut split the skull all the way to the base.

“The person is truly figuring it out as they go,” said Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution.

America was Gothic from the get-go.

(thanks to Jesse "Top Chef" Walker)

The era of ghost money

"Ghost money" is a term of spycraft art.  It refers to cash ladled out without oversight, and for shadowy ends.

Afghan officials have used the payments for an assortment of expenses, including underwriting "informal negotiations" and buying off warlords, some of whom are connected to the Taliban.

"We called it 'ghost money,'" Khalil Roman, Karzai's former deputy chief of staff, told the Times. "It came in secret, and it left in secret." 

Mother Jones offers a short history of the practice, from the Cold War through the current War on Terror.  Don't miss the snarling last line.

(thanks to Jesse "Under the Radar" Walker)

Korea considers games as addictive like drugs

The South Korean government is mulling a law to deem computer games as addictive in the same policy category as drugs and alcohol.  The bill's sponsor has medical background, and hence adds authority to the proposal.

We should expect civil liberties restrictions from this, and lo:

According to Korean game site Gamemeca, the bill contains questionable language like, "The governing body shall have the right to regulate manufacturing, distribution and sale of addictive substances and can also limit promotion of them as well." The implication is that the government could interfere with game development, releases, and promotion.

Once again, we're seeing cyberfear-driven policy moves without scientific backing.

(thanks to Randy McCall)

Arctic pyramids and Cold War Gothic

There's a fine piece of Cold War Gothic embedded within Brian Phillips' splendid article on the Ititarod.  It appears as myth or urban legend, told late one very cold night:

Did you know that there are military installations hidden all over Alaska? Relics of the Cold War, abandoned. Underground bunkers, empty Quonset huts. White Alice sites, some of them are called, the ruins of a once-sophisticated communications relay. The phrase “White Alice” made me shiver. Folks who’d snuck in reported unexplained noises, visions. They’d hallucinate. There were stories about ghosts.

The shadow biosphere

Uncanny science: what if another biosphere exists alongside our own, quiet and hard to discern?  Naturally it lives in epistemological darkness, and receives the Infocultish name of "the shadow biosphere".  And its inhabitants are “weird life”.

How could this work?  The possibilities of our biological bases:

“All the micro-organisms we have detected on Earth to date have had a biology like our own: proteins made up of a maximum of 20 amino acids and a DNA genetic code made out of only four chemical bases: adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine,” says Cleland. “Yet there are up to 100 amino acids in nature and at least a dozen bases. These could easily have combined in the remote past to create lifeforms with a very different biochemistry to our own. More to the point, some may still exist in corners of the planet.”

Hard to tell if this is speculation or pseudoscience, but it's a fun concept.

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

A murder spied on Google Maps

What looks like a killing appeared on Google Maps:

It looks like two guys have dragged a bloody corpse onto this pier.  With dramatic shadows.

Yes, it could also be a dog tracking water onto sunlit wood.  That would be less impressive... unless the dog were in on the kill.

(thanks to jason kielbasa and Ladi)

The earth itself gnaws at Russian civilization

The Earth continued its campaign against the human race, this time assaulting the Russian city of Samara.

Sinkholes have been opening up under streets, showing a special hatred for cars.

(Not this Samarra)

We've been tracking the sinkhole menace for some time. Don't be shy about sharing your tales of subterranean warfare.

(via Scott Leslie on the Twitter)