Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Revenge of a sinkhole victim

Two years ago a California sinkhole swallowed up a car, nearly drowning its driver in water and sewage.

Stephanie Scott, a makeup artist, suffered brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder after she escaped from the sinkhole by pulling herself from her flipped SUV, according to her lawyers. She received help from fire rescue workers as the crater filled with raw sewage in February 2017.

Now the survivor received damages from the city of Los Angeles.

(thanks to Ed Webb)

Naturally Thanksgiving has a Gothic side

The scribes at Jezebel dug up some very unsettling Thanksgiving cards from a century ago.  Most involve children.  Several are clearly Infocult's favored stuffing.

For example, a pleasant child gets close to a living bird, with deadly weapon in reach:

Or this sinister image of angelic children, one luring a turkey to its doom, while another readies a - garrotte?

Meanwhile, a lad gets ready with a different killing tool:

(thanks to Thomas "Pardon ME!" Burkdall)

Today in dreading video games

An Ohio state attorney offered an interesting example of cyberfear this week.  Seeking to explain why fraternity brothers accidentally killed a pledge, Keller J. Blackburn gave this intriguing theory:

“The overall lesson that I think is so difficult for our youth when they live in this video game culture is that if something goes wrong, they can reset it, start it over, and everything’s O.K.,” Keller J. Blackburn, the Athens County prosecuting attorney, said in announcing the charges on Tuesday.

But in real life, he added, “their decisions have actual consequences.”

This has several dimensions.  First, there's the argument that players can not distinguish between reality and games (which only works for computer games, not tabletop ones, although analog role-playing games have long had this mystique).  Second, Blackburn associates games with "our youth," here meaning teenagers and men in their very early 20s, missing the social reality that people of all ages play computer games.

Third, there's the gap between the crime and games.  To explain, here's the Times account of the former:

About a month after enrolling at Ohio University, Collin Wiant pledged the Sigma Pi fraternity. But on Nov. 12, 2018, he collapsed at an unofficial party at the fraternity’s off-campus house. A coroner later determined he had died of asphyxiation after inhaling nitrous oxide from a canister, known as a whippet...

James Dylan Wanke, 25, the general manager of the store where the nitrous oxide was purchased, and Joshua Thomas Androsac, 20, a member of the Sigma Pi fraternity who the authorities said provided the drug to Mr. Wiant, were charged with first-degree involuntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum penalty of 11 years in prison.

This reader can't think of a computer game where the player learns how to sell or give nitrous to another character.  For that matter, it's hard to think of a game where you can do whippets.

But this is unfair to Mr. Blackburn, who doesn't seem to be charging the Sigma Pi men with acting out game instructions precisely.  Instead, his charge concerns the specific game mechanics of restarting and extra lives.  Since those date back to the 1970s, we should expect Blackburn to outline the multi-generational crime way that followed in the wake of dire social influences like Ms. Pacman.

Notably missing from the attorney's account is the non-digital, far more prosaic explanations familiar to anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with American fraternity culture.  Frats can do horrendously stupid things in their hazing processes.  Frats can also encourage young men to ingest dangerous substances in potentially fatal amounts.  Frats can mishandle the medical emergencies that result.  Again, this isn't news.  It's simply history and our lived reality - and hence less exciting to mention when one can, instead, babble about the menace of a video game culture.

Insurance claim, Gothic style

The process of getting an insurance claim can be tricky, and sometimes rewarding, but not often is it Gothic.

Today's real-life Gothic comes from South Africa, where a family sought to prove a fact in a case.

Outraged family members say they were forced to drag in the corpse of their uncle, Sifiso Justice Mhlongo, after an insurance company demanded proof he was dead. The grieving family members filmed the ghastly scene, and the footage has gone viral.

One clip of said footage can be seen here.

According to the company's Twitter account, "We can confirm that the claim was paid.."

(thanks to Steven "I'm not dead!" Kaye)

Russian Gothic: a murder in history

Today's real-life Gothic story comes from Russia, where a - well, let's just go with the Washington Post headline:

Russia’s greatest Napoleonic reenactor was found drunk in a river with the severed arms of his lover in his backpack

To explain a bit:

The 63-year-old Sokolov is an assistant professor of history and one of Russia’s most prominent scholarly reenactors of the Napoleonic wars. The arms in the backpack are thought to be those of one of his students, 24-year-old Anastasia Yeshchenko, whose dismembered and decapitated body was found in Sokolov’s apartment just a few houses down from where he was hauled out of the water, drenched and intoxicated, police said.

And it's even more (melo)dramatic:

His plan, local news organizations reported, was to make his way to the Peter and Paul Fortress on Sunday, dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte, to romantically take his own life in front of gaping and undoubtedly awestruck tourists. 

Fellow students said Yeshchenko lived with Sokolov for some time but had recently moved out. Photos online show them dancing, she in an Empire dress with white gloves past her elbows, he in a glittering uniform decked with gold braid and a red sash, pulled tight around his evident paunch. He called her Isabelle, after one of the Bonapartes, and insisted she call him Sire.

The Gothic dimensions are evident:

Sokolov’s lawyer told the Tass news agency that he has confessed to the murder, a crime of St. Petersburgian passion that has parallels to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” — the use of an ax — and to the 1916 assassination of the “mad monk” Grigori Rasputin, with its denouement in the city’s dark interior waterways.

There might be a little bit of Edgar Allan Poe in there, too: Sokolov told investigators that he shot Yeshchenko in a fit of rage on Thursday, then entertained guests on Friday while her body lay in a room behind a closed door.

(thanks to Steven "Survived the Berezina" Kaye)

Ruins of the Cold War

The Gothic often lives in the ruins of power.

The Cold War's vast armaments are fine spawning grounds for horror tales.  A new book collects photos of Cold War ruins. CNN has a nice gallery.

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

Blood transfusions from young people are back

In 2018 one Silicon Valley startup offered a starkly Gothic service: blood from young people, intended to improve older folks' ailing bodies.

The firm, Ambrosia, reduced operations amid general dread, suspicion, and an FDA smackdown... and now the founder has launched a new business that offers pretty much the same thing.  It is delightfully named "Ivy Plasma."

(thanks to Todd "Teetotaler" Bryant)

Here comes the texts of February

Major American mobile phone service providers suddenly sent people a bunch of text messages that were supposed to go out this past Valentine's Day.

The story has a quiet eerieness to it:

Overnight, a multitude of people received text messages that appear to have originally been sent on or around Valentine’s Day 2019. These people never received the text messages in the first place; the people who sent the messages had no idea that they had never been received, and they did nothing to attempt to resend them overnight.

Some examples are classic haunted media, crossing Gothic boundaries:

Dozens and dozens of people have posted about receiving messages overnight. Most expressed confusion or spoke to the awkwardness of the situation, having been told by friends that they sent a mysterious early-morning text message. A few spoke to much more distressing repercussions of this error: one person said they received a message from an ex-boyfriend who had died; another received messages from a best friend who is now dead.

The reason seems prosaic, if not very impressive technically:

A company named Syniverse, which provides networking services, later took blame for the messages being delayed. Syniverse said a single server was at fault: that server failed on February 14th, trapping messages waiting to be sent out; the server was only brought back online on November 7th. When that happened, all of the messages were finally delivered.

Syniverse initially published a note saying that 168,149 delayed messages were sent. A spokesperson later told The Verge that the company is “still assessing the scope and volume of messages impacted by this server disruption.”

(via MetaFilter)

Deep face

Two galaxies collide... then turn their synthetic, baleful gaze upon you.

As the official Hubble announcement calmly puts it:

MENACING-LOOKING 'FACE' FORMED BY TITANIC SMASHUP BETWEEN TWO GALAXIES

Behold:

The piercing "eyes" are the most prominent feature of what resembles the face of an otherworldly creature. This frightening object is actually the result of a titanic head-on collision between two galaxies.

Each "eye" is the bright core of a galaxy, the result of one galaxy slamming into another. The outline of the face is a ring of young blue stars. Other clumps of new stars form a nose and mouth.

The system is catalogued as Arp-Madore 2026-424, from the Arp-Madore "Catalogue of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations."

(thanks to Steven "Here's Looking At You, Kid" Kaye)

Sinkhole devours bus

Gaia continued her war on the human race this week by devouring a bus in Pittsburgh.

(thanks to Jesse "Not the Lone Driver" Walker)

The terrifying face of the sun staring right at you

NASA shared this disturbing photo of the sun, which the cold-hearted scientists describe thusly:

Active regions on the sun combined to look something like a jack-o-lantern’s face on Oct. 8, 2014...

Gaze upon the hideous solar visage for yourself:
(thanks to Steven "I Warned You About the Black Sun But Did You Listen?" Kaye)

Behold the CreepyPhone

Faithful Infocult readers have been known to ask themselves unusual questions.  For example, "What if David Cronenberg designed a mobile phone?"

Finally we have an answer.

Marc Teyssier at Telecom Paris in France and his colleagues have devised an artificial skin for interactive devices that responds to touch. The skin is able to detect a variety of gestures, including sliding, stretching and rotation.

“I wanted to pinch my phone,” says Teyssier as the reason for designing the skin. The skin also responds to different gestures that mimic human emotional communication.

The artificial skin is programmed to associate different gestures with certain emotions. Sudden hard pressure on the skin is associated with anger and tapping is a means of seeking attention, while sustained contact and stroking are associated with providing comfort. 

A short video will amuse:

The artificial skin is made of three layers, consisting of a layer of stretchable copper wire sandwiched between two layers of silicone. Pressure on the skin changes the electric charge of the system. 

Onward: "The next step is to make the skin more realistic, including with embedded hair and temperature features."

Gothic car wash

An Ohio establishment improved the car wash experience by adding scary clowns.

(thanks to Thomas "Red Nose" Burkdall)

A sinkhole opens wide in Boston

The Earth continued its campaign of destruction against the human race by opening a large sinkhole in Boston.

Dispatcher Joey Aberle said the water main break created the hole, which he estimated to be approximately 10 and 15 feet across. The pavement was lifted and the water pushed the dirt out, he said.

No casualties reported... yet.

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

Epidemics of possessed women

The BBC reports on several cases of Malaysian women claiming dark, supernatural experiences.

One teenager describes her experience:

I was at my desk feeling sleepy when I felt a hard, sharp tap on my shoulder.

I turned round to see who it was and the room went dark.

Fear overtook me. I felt a sharp, splitting pain in my back and my head started spinning. I fell to the floor.

Before I knew it, I was looking into the 'otherworld'. Scenes of blood, gore and violence.

The scariest thing I saw was a face of pure evil.

It was haunting me, I couldn't escape. I opened my mouth and tried to scream but no sound came out.

I passed out.

Then other girls suffered related experiences.

Siti's outburst triggered a powerful chain reaction that ripped through the school. Within minutes students in other classrooms started screaming, their frantic cries ricocheting through the halls.

One girl fainted after claiming to have seen the same "dark figure".

Case after case unfolds. Some are quietly chilling:

"All hell broke loose" during a campus singing competition when a female student claimed to have spotted "a smiling Buddhist monk" on top of a nearby dormitory. "She let out a bloodcurdling scream," he recalls.

The BBC then examines different responses from Islamic scholars, folk shamans, psychologists, and others.

(thanks to Jesse "Not Screaming Yet" Walker)