Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Death by Facebook

3 Columbians were killed after their names appeared on a Facebook death list, and dozens more remain on a growing number of lists.

Already the affair looks like a haunted media short story.

The hit list on Facebook, which was posted August 17, gave the people named three days to leave the town of Puerto Asis or be executed, said Volmar Perez Ortiz, a federal official whose title is defender of the public.

Police at first thought the posting was a joke, Perez said in a statement issued Saturday. But the publication of a second list with 31 additional names led authorities to convene a special security meeting Friday, Perez said. (CNN)

[T[he use of Facebook to warn the victims, as well as the unknown origin and the purpose of the mysterious list, all make the case highly unusual. (Mashable)

The impact is already being felt, partly as terror, notes CNN:

Colombian media said Monday the number of those threatened has grown and panic has overtaken Puerto Asis, with some parents sending their children out of town because their names are on the Facebook notice.

Residents have been overcome with "panic and anxiety," several news outlets quoted Putumayo state official Andres Gerardo Verdugo as saying.

Partly through Facebook's competition: "Several of those residents posted their concerns on Twitter".

(Further proof that we live in the age of social media.)

Facebook has largely escaped a terrible reputation, but stories keep surfacing.

(thanks to Todd Bryant via email and Ed Webb via Diigo; image of Bryan's Facebook empire generated by this fine wheel app)

Accidental cemetery Gothic

A French couple attending one funeral were shocked to discover that they'd missed another one, to their horror.  It was their son's.  And they thought he was still alive.

Josiane Vermeersch and Elie Langlet were at Hellemmes cemetery near Lille in northern France on Wednesday for the funeral of Elie Langlet's brother.

As they left, one of the family party noticed a new headstone in an area reserved for paupers' graves. It read, "Olivier Vermeersch, 1968-2010."

 A quick check with the local undertakers confirmed it was indeed the couple's son who lived less than a mile away. He was found dead from natural causes at his home in July.

The family had attempted to contact the 42-year-old, specifically about his uncle's funeral, but heard nothing back and assumed he had either gone away or was still brooding about a minor argument.

Dutch article.

(via Arnaud Leene via Twitter) 

Zombie hunting in Afghanistan

"Soldiers Zombie Hunting in Afghanistan": this is a CBS News headline.  It suggests a world gone mad in zompocalypse, but really describes US soldiers' love of the zombie subgenre.

 Dog-eared copies of Max Brooks' "World War Z," a first person account of the Great Zombie War, and his definitive undead-fighting manual, "The Zombie Survival Guide," are found wherever soldiers relax and oil their weapons...

As uniforms and body armor become more and more covered in Velcro, Zombie Hunter patches have become hot sellers for tactical suppliers. At the German Post Exchange at Kandahar Airfield, that patch is continually sold out.

Pictured to left.

Here's a fun Dracula connection:

One soldier showed me a huge, razor-sharp Nepalese Ghurka knife that weighed about seven pounds -- a lot of extra weight to carry on patrol. He explained that because killing zombies required a decapitating or skull-crushing blow, there was simply no better tool for fighting the undead in close quarters.

The reporter then maps the fiction onto reality:

The problems of war against the undead have parallels with the problems soldiers face daily in Afghanistan. A zombie needs no food, water or equipment and pursues the living with implacable determination. For soldiers trying to defend a million dollar vehicle against a malnourished, illiterate man wielding a $40 roadside bomb, the similarity must be chilling.

Worlds in collision

Jupiter received another smack from the void this week.

 

Asteroid impact, or maybe an Earth-sized electrical storm?

Watch the flash in this 5-second clip.

Also this week in harsh planet news, a JPL team identifies planetary dust, the remains of planets ground up by binary star systems.  Says one Norse-like astronomer,

"It's theoretically possible that habitable planets could exist around these types of stars, so if there happened to be any life there, it could be doomed."

The ultimate dead technology logic

If the Web is dead...

Wired story, August 2005: "We Are the Web" Wired story, Sept 2010: "The Web Is Dead" Conclusion: "We Are Dead" Silogismo lógico d Carr :)
Dolors Reig

Here's the Nicholas Carr original.

(via the Bavatweet)

Peter Sellers *is* Agent Smith

Some amazing movie posters have been appearing from the mind of Hartter. They are period posters of movies from alternate histories, with remixed credits.

How about Ghostbusters with classic horror actors? Pam Greer in John Boorman's The Matrix? Alejandro Jodorowsky's "The Star Wars"?  Terence Stamp as 007?  Feast your eyes on Mario Bava's Batman:

William Shatner is Daredevil.  And who else could be Bullseye, really?

Credits from John Boorman's The Matrix:

• Sidney Poitier as Morpheus
• Pam Greer as Trinity
• Bruce Lee as Neo
• Peter Sellers as Agent Amith
• Music by Bernard Herrmann

 

and just imagine these credits:

 
I think the idea of Tarkovsky directing a Micronauts movie could ruin my brain.

(via Metafilter, whose fully-linked post is awesome)

How to maximize an Indian burial ground

Speaking of mocking supernatural stuff, XKCD hits an old American horror theme today.

 

Krugman to the Fed: "Ia! Goat with a thousand young!"

 Great Recession Gothic keeps going, as Paul Krugman offers this fine pulp vision:

the policy elite — central bankers, finance ministers, politicians who pose as defenders of fiscal virtue — are acting like the priests of some ancient cult, demanding that we engage in human sacrifices to appease the anger of invisible gods.

The metaphor (or allegory, really) opens up quickly.  Bond markets or bad models thereof are invisible gods, we consumers and (sometimes) workers are human sacrifices (cruel costs of re/depressions), etc.

Krugman immediately excuses his lapse into Lovecraftianism - "Hey, I told you it was over the top" -  but returns to it later on:

You see, then, why I find myself thinking in terms of strange and savage cults, demanding human sacrifices to appease unseen forces.

It's a classic use of the Gothic, dating back to the old class warfare use of vampires, for example.  Bankers as bloodthirsty monsters is still a live trope.

For Krugman there might be a connection to the science fiction trope of bad actors using supernatural trappings to disguise strategies for very material power.  We can infer this from his avowed love of Asimov's science fiction, perhaps. 

On a more Gothic level, think Gothic expliqué.  That's when the scary supernatural plot is undone by rational explanation, a la Scooby Doo.  Krugman here is the meddlesome kid, ripping the monster mask off of the bankers' faces. 

Secret metro spaces

Creating dreamy, spooky versions of underground rail is what Alexander Andreev's excellent Metronomicon series does. 

People are added in odd, grim ways.

Insect imagery occurs frequently, from pupae to gigantic monsters: 

 

Sometimes the spaces are given depth upon depth:

(via John Coulthart) 

Sextortion, the new way to fear cyberculture

"Sextortion": that refers to extorting money via embarrassing media files, especially if gathered by mobile devices.  This awesome neologism appears in a recent AP story.  The New York Times copy begins splendidly, in full scary-sleaze mode:

The nightmare began with a party: three teenage girls with a webcam, visiting an Internet chatroom and yielding to requests to flash their breasts.

Chat rooms! nightmares! teens partying! nudity!

The article swiftly cools down, though, resisting the usual fearsome internet meme of lumping together preteens with teens as minors, and not offering any more spooky fodder.  No calls for laws or crackdowns; just this fairly reasonable, quiet note: "The cases have prompted law enforcement officials and advocates to caution teens about their activities."

One problem with the AP article is its claim that "Online 'Sextortion' of Teens on the Rise".  But, as Slate points out, the article can't actually prove this.  It states

No one currently tracks the numbers of cases involving online sexual extortion in state and federal courts, but prosecutors and others point toward several recent high-profile examples victimizing teens in a dozen states[.]

Slate's writer: 

If the AP now considers anecdotes to be data, I've got a piece I want to write under the headline "Bogus News on the Rise at the AP."

It's a toothsome meme, nonetheless, and could well persist.

(via Jesse Walker @ Reason; excellent headline for that post, too)