Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Murder and Wikipedia, continued

Following up on yesterday's post about a murder announced via Wikipedia, the Chris Benoit case: someone who claims to be the same poster who scooped the police explains him/herself.  They were reporting a death rumor, but not a killing.

I was reading rumors and speculation about this matter online, and one of them included that his wife may have passed away, and I did the wrong thing by posting it on wikipedia to spite there being no evidence.

 

Note how the poster can't resist slamming the Wikipedia:

I just posted something that was at that time a piece of wrong unsourced information that is typical on wikipedia, as it is done all the time.

"It's not my fault - it's the platform I used."

(thanks to Sean T. Collins)

Murder notification by Wikipedia

This is quietly disturbing, a murder announced by Wikipedia:

Chris Benoit strangled his wife and 7-year-old son, placing Bibles next to their bodies, before hanging himself on the cable of a weight-machine in his home, authorities said. No motive was offered for the killings.

Investigators had not discovered the bodies Monday when someone altered Benoit's Wikipedia entry to mention his wife's death, authorities said.

An anonymous user with the same IP address as the person who made the edits confessed early Friday on an online discussion page attached to the Web site, saying the changes were based on rumors and speculation, not hard evidence.

The authenticity of the posting could not immediately be confirmed.

(Thanks to Steve Burnett)

Oh death, ooooooo death

Here's a fine mashup, actually an imaginative re-editing of O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), as a horror movie.  Short, elegant, spooky.

(via Jim Groom a Twitter)

Copyright fiction, the latest iteration

"Gucci DRM" is a short-short story about digital rights management (DRM).  Which puts it in the very selective membership of intellectual property fiction.  I can't imagine a story about 2015 without augmented reality, but it is a short-short.

Speaking of IP fiction, two years ago I wrote up an initial copyright fiction corpus.  Has anything emerged since?

We can also consider copyright fiction to be a subset of literature of information.

(via name-checked BoingBoing)

Mysterious boom in Vermont

An explosion shook our house yesterday afternoon.  The sound erupted into the afternoon, and the house shook.  I checked for damage - found none - then ran down our lane to check on neighbors.  Puppy and I found everyone ok, but wondering about the noise.  I called 911.  Police had received many calls from across the county, but had no clue as to the cause of the boom.

Turns out to have been... a sonic boom, caused by a US military jet breaking the sound barrier 40,000 feet up.

A moment of rural mystery, sounds racing across the mountains, plummeting from near the edge of space.

How many Mii's look like Hannibal Lector?

The Boston Globe offers a new twist on fearsome computer gaming: Wii violence.  The argument goes that it takes the (unproven) effects of passive media, ramped up through computer gaming, then accelerates the badness because of the physical engagement the Wii provides.

The article offers some predictable complaints from interested parties:

"The more realistic and involving the game gets, and the greater the similarity between the action in the game and real life action, the stronger the negative effects would be," says Joanne Cantor, a Wisconsin research psychologist who has spent 30 years studying the effects of media violence on children. "No, your son may not turn into a criminal. But exposure will take a toll on his life somewhere, probably in interpersonal relationships. These are subtle effects. They take time to surface. A teen isn't going to notice them."

So subtle that the research doesn't bear them out, or lets us isolate this medium's effects from the blizzard of others.  I am glad to see that Cantor works on news media stories, rather than just examples from fiction.

Well, one can always take the prospective, science fictional approach:

"I shudder to think of teenage boys playing this," says child psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint , director of the Media Center at the Judge Baker Children's Center, which houses the CCFC. "The level of participation makes the game worse than any that preceded it. It might not make anyone a killer, but could it make someone prone to domestic violence or child abuse?"

Presumably he means "prone to initiating... violence or child abuse," rather than receiving it.

I am delighted that this Globe article takes time to show some view other than the demonizing:

David Finkelhor , co director of the Family Research Lab at the University of New Hampshire, says no game alone is going to drag a child into criminal activity. "It's when you have other potentiating factors -- family problems, mental health issues, extreme stress, dangerous neighborhoods," he says. "Playing these games with or without the Wii enhancement is not going to take the typical teenage boy and make a killer out of him."

Notice, too, his comment about juvenile crime rates.

(via The Lede)

TV series about/as/for/against alien invasion

Robert Reed's "Eight Episodes" (2006) is a short story describing a failed tv series.  It's a clever conceit, which I won't spoil here.  Listen to the podcast at Escape Pod, or read this HTML version from Asimov's.

There's an alternate reality game (ARG) style plot at its center, but I don't want to ruin it.  Suffice to say that ARG players and designers should recognize some movements and themes.

Maybe Katamari isn't like heroin after all

The American Medical Association (AMA) decided to put computer game addiction on the back burner, after considering it as a serious thing this week.

News.com has a nice quote from the pro-addiction model side:

"Working with this problem is no different than working with alcoholic patients. The same denial, the same rationalization, the same inability to give it up," Dr. Thomas Allen of the Osler Medical Center in Towson, Md.

(via Slashdot)

"Everything is better with zombies"

"Everything is Better with Zombies" is a good meta-horror story, using the zombie trope to gently wander through the lives of two kids.  Another good podcast from Pseudopod.

That rare subgenre, horror that's about horror stories and also contains horrific stuff, should have its own anthology.  I think of, for example, Joe Lansdale's ruthless  "The Night They Missed The Horror Show" (1988), or Thomas Ligotti's sublime "Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story" (1985).

King Welles at Ubu

Ubuweb continues to offer glorious gifts, this time webbing up Orson Welles: The One-Man Band (1995).  It's a documentary focusing on Welles' last couple of decades, and splendid to watch so far.

If you don't know the Ubuweb, get there at once and revel.