Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Haunting in style

Today's Gothic/punk meme:

(thanks to Ainsley Cripps on Facebook)

The Gothic sea

Sometimes we think of the sea - the deep sea - as a splendidly Gothic place.  Listen to this BBC article on oceanic exploration:

[oceanographer Sylvia Earle] believes the very deepest parts of the ocean have been the most neglected.
Most of the sea floor lies between 4,000m and 6,000m (13,000-20,000ft) below sea level: a layer known as the abyssal zone.

"abyssal zone": lovely.

Let's go deeper:

But trenches, although few in number, are twice as deep, and they occupy an area called the Hadal Zone.

She says: "That last little bit only accounts for maybe 3% of the ocean. Well think about it - that's an area the size of Australia, North America, or China - and we're ignoring it?"

A huge, unknown land, deep under us: what a fine Gothic area of potential.

We noted the Gothic lure of the sea a few years back, reading Peter Watts.  Some gorgeous stuff like

Ballard makes a strangled sound and dives into the mud. The benthic ooze boils up around her in a seething cloud; she disappears in a torrent of planktonic corpses.

(thanks to Ed Webb's pelagic Diigo); images via OceanLink and Xewkija Council)

Metal names, the map

How heavy metal band names are made, the ultimate infographic.

Here's a detail:

And here's the whole thing, squished up:

(thanks to the shadowy "Mr. K")

From horror film to astrophysics

Here's an interesting claim by the great documentarian Adam Curtis: a horror movie inspired the steady-state cosmology hypothesis.

The movie was Dead of Night (1945), and some British astronomers were impressed by it.

The scientists loved the film, and they sat discussing its circular structure. One of them suggested that it could be the model for how the whole universe really worked. That, although the universe was expanding, it was also constantly renewing itself - to maintain itself in a steady state.

The Gothic: making your world, one vision at a time.

 

When Web scraping gets creepy

Maybe we can apply the uncanny valley principle to... Web content scraping and metadata.

Nice conceit: Web scraping tools often make small mistakes, such as including metadata tags or trimming off some needed content.  "[I]t feels wrong. It just doesn’t look exactly like what you consider content as a human."

It’s a bit like drawing hands or faces – unless you get it within 5% of perfection it just looks wrong. You’re almost better off drawing it at 80% within perfection and calling it a cartoon.

The uncanny valley of article extraction!

The closer you are to perfection, the less subconscious clues users will get to pick out the content themselves and the more jarring the difference between what they expect and what they get.

This is fairly arcane stuff for most users.  But it's nice to see the creepy digital extend its awesome pseudopods into another front.

Shootings occur; time to blame Goths?

Shortly after yesterday's Ohio school shootings, some sought to blame Goth stuff to explain the alleged shooter's motivations.  Background stories include "Goth phase" when describing Lane's background (for example) (more).

The apparent shooter did write some classic teen-angst/fantasy/metal stuff:

He will have for what he pleads, through the eradication of disease. So, to the castle he proceeds, like an ominous breeze through the trees. "Stay back!" The Guards screamed as they were thrown to their knees. "Oh God, have mercy, please!"

The castle, she gasped and then so imprisoned her breath, to the shallow confines of her fragile chest. I'm on the lamb but I ain't no sheep. I am Death. And you have always been the sod. So repulsive and so odd.

You never even deserved the presence of God, and yet, I am here. Around your cradle I plod. Came on foot, without shod. How improper, how rude. However, they shall not mind the mud on my feet if there is blood on your sheet.

Now! Feel death, not just mocking you. Not just stalking you but inside of you. Wriggle and writhe. Feel smaller beneath my might. Seizure in the Pestilence that is my scythe. Die, all of you. 

Balancing a Goth focus are other factors, including bullying, parental misbehavior, and depression.  I'll keep an eye on this to see what factor predominates.

(thanks to Peter Naegele; best wishes to your kids)

Death from above and within

Using the Gothic to make a point: a clever anti-smoking ad.

(thanks to Charles Cameron)

Garfield the ghost

Consider the Gothic ontology of Garfield.  His shadowy reality is exposed by a single storyline:

The clear implication, at the end of the bizarre arc from October 23rd to the 28th, 1989, is that the entirety of the Garfield comic strip is, in some way, an elaborate hallucination, a paranoid delusion, or an extended meditation on a stage of grief. 

It's a weird storyline, like a cross between old EC comics and It's a Wonderful Life.  But the conclusion is ectoplasmic:

Garfield is a ghost. And a real ghost, not some bullshit about a lingering soul trying to finish up his business. Ghosts are space. They are, particularly, a becoming-consciousness of space. Ghosts are not embodied, or if they are, it is a function of narrative and not ghost-ness; ghosts are absences of space, absences within space, that structure the space. And so, apparently, is Garfield.

(Thanks to Jesse "Not Odie" Walker)

Reanimating the tomb's dead

Now here is a headline that just shrieks Gothic pulps:

New Species of Life Resurrected from Ancient Andean Tomb

Doesn't it suggest a story about a rogue explorer invading a cursed temple?  Alas, the article focuses on the resurrection of a pre-Incan alcoholic drink.  Which might have its own terrors, true:

"The flavor was very good. The aroma was very good. The alcohol was relatively good, but the effect was horrible. Just two drinks of this chicha and I had this bad headache typical of aldehydes and esters."

(thanks to Ed Webb's fervid bookmarking)

Vote Cthulhu

The stars are always right for this:

Yes He can.

(via Jason Wagoner on Facebook)