Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Lego Lovecraft

Here's a fun Lego project, building scenes from HP Lovecraft tales.

For example, the reveal from "The Outsider":

Eating your tasty face

A new 3d printing scheme lets users scan their face, then print it in chocolate.  Go ahead, eat your face.

Naturally this is from Japan.

(thanks to Ed Webb)

Ruins galore

Here's a fine collection of Gothic eye candy, "30+ of the most beautiful abandoned places and modern ruins i’ve ever seen".

Zombie emergency alert

A Montana emergency alert service gets pranked:

Someone apparently hacked into the Emergency Alert System and announced on KRTV and the CW that "dead bodies are rising from their graves" in several Montana counties.

KRTV adds, helpfully, that "This message did not originate from KRTV, and there is no emergency."

(thanks to Steven Kaye)

Surviving zombies with inspired architecture

Mad Gothic architecture plan of the day:

So, how does a community escape viral zombies? With a permanently nomadic habitat that is completely self-sufficient – both in terms of energy generation and food production.

What does it look like?  A delirious wheel, rolling across the apocalypse:

In other words:

a conceptual home for future residents who will roam the globe in what looks like a giant hamster wheel that offers escape from flesh-eating zombies...

It is a self-propelling vessel that is structured to ensure that each unit remains laterally intact, whether the entire ecosystem is rolling or laid out a flat – a process that takes a mere 15 minutes and allows the community to re-stock and collect other survivors of the zombie plague when possible and necessary.

This is brilliant.  What a fine setting for a zombie story.

(thanks to Ed Webb)

More body bits in America

Speaking of severed human body parts in America, here's a weird and gory story from December.

Sewer workers in Michigan discovered two "precisely cut" cubes of human flesh in a drain pipe...

Police in Warren, outside of Detroit, say they "have no idea" whose remains they could be, other than they belong to an "unidentified obese white female."

Better still, "As if that isn't disturbing enough, this is the second time cubes of flesh have been found, which has authorities fearing it could be the work of a serial killer."

Detective Mel Nearing told ABC the "chunks of skin and fat and little bit of muscle tissue" appeared to be "almost exact matches" in appearance to the 10 pieces found in the same sewer pipe about five miles away. The pieces found in August had a tattoo, and police have released a photo of the tattooed flesh in hopes someone recognizes the design.

Interesting detail:

The precision of the cuts suggests the body was frozen before slicing. Since the flesh discovered this morning didn't appear to have decomposed, police say it could be a second person or the same body had been frozen, with the killer disposing of it pieces at a time.

Once you get near Detroit, assume the Gothic.

(thanks to Steven "Has an Alibi" Kaye)

Severed heads in Chicago

O'Hare Airport is usually fairly horrific, but last month it became even more grisly.  Airport workers opened a package to discover eighteen severed human heads.

The heads, which still had the skin on them, appeared to be medical samples from Italy that became misplaced, according to local reports.

America: stealing Canadian innovation one gory pile at a time.

(thanks to Annette, Ed Webb, saramin, and the rest of Infocult's neglected Web swarm)

Zombie politics hits Italy

Zombie politics has reached Italy, at least in terms of rhetoric.

Beppe Grillo calls four-time Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi a "dwarf zombie", outgoing premier Mario Monti "rigor Montis" and Italy's political class "the walking dead".

(thanks to Ed Webb)

How to stun a carpeter

Found on the wild Web:

(via Jesse Walker on the Twitters)

Retro-death-telegraphy

A British workshop wins Infocult's heart with its offer to explore "Retro-death-telegraphy".  It's "an experimental laboratory for the construction of equipment to test theories of communication with the Unknown".

Ah, it must have been fun:

The laboratory will work through early wireless telegraphy instruments from coherer's to crystal sets to spasmodic arrangements of rocks and electronics. Participants will experiment and build devices using galena, germanium, copper, electronic circuits, and television sets. These will act as primitive transmitters and receivers. The sounds and images emitted from them will be projected into the room and recorded.

During the evening the participants are invited to join a séance to test the theories of EVP and other supposed supernatural phenomenon to see if anything happens. The séance will form one of the live performances for a small evening concert (full info to come soon).

(via Steve Burnett)