Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Another royal inflicted upon humanity

The British royal family emitted another one of themselves, and The Onion has the first image.

“I am very excited to report that the little sire has been born happy, hungry, and ready to greet the nation,” said a representative for the Royal Family, who noted that while the Duchess experienced some slight soreness during birth..."

(thanks to Michelle Gerry)

The voracious earth opens its maw

The Atlantic has a nice photo gallery of sinkholes, a perennial Infocult favorite.

(thanks to Ed Webb)

Settling alien worlds with monster tech

Nothing says "humans are colonizing this place" like giant, hopping, plant-bearing eyeball robots.

Le Petit Prince carries a plant inside its glass container and provides it with everything it needs to flourish on the red planet. The greenhouse robot is designed to learn the optimal process of searching for nutrients, and it can send reports to its fellow robots through wireless communication, enabling them to learn from one another.

Note the red-eyed versions.

A video shows them... moving:

(thanks to the daughter of Infocult)

Interactive martyr torture simulation art

Automaton-style horror is what we find in Saints Alive.  It's an interactive exhibit which "invites viewers to torment, mutilate, and martyr fiberglass effigies of church legends."

Seriously:

The exhibit is comprised of a series of sculptures that fuse religious icons with a steampunk aesthetic and feature interactive elements that flagellate the saints when gallery goers step on foot pedals. A statue of Saint Apollonia, who was tortured by having her teeth pulled and smashed in front of her, pantomimes the ordeal hundreds of times per day.

Visitors can simulate the doubts of Saint Thomas by remotely jabbing a finger into the wounds of Christ’s disembodied torso. Truly perverse patrons of the arts can put themselves in the sandals of a cruel Roman emperor and take a turn at spinning Saint Catherine on her eponymous wheel.

(thanks to Todd Bryant)

Terrifying children photographs

Joshu Hoffine creates beautiful horror photos.  Entertainingly, he uses his own children as subjects:

(thanks to Annette)

Update on a Chinese ghost city

One Chinese ghost city continues to decay, according to Bloomberg.

Posters of the Chinese character for good luck adorn shops bolted shut in the northern city of Ordos, where cranes stand silently above half-finished developments and doors on workers’ dormitories creak in the wind.

Zombie neoliberalism

In our time we can Goth up any political object, it seems. For example, folks can see neoliberalism as a zombie.

Neoliberalism now shambles on as zombie - but as the afficionados of zombie films are well aware, it is sometimes harder to kill a zombie than a living person.

The zombie theme connects interestingly with some of the author's political recommendations.  The call to class war suits the stories of warfare against zombies, as does the exploration of organization against the uncanny, terrible threat.

There's also an unintentionally zombie bit, as one 20th-century figure rises from his grave: "We must learn to overcome certain habits of anti-Stalinist thinking."

(thanks to Ed Webb; image by Josh Jensen)

Listening to flesh-eating horror

Today's story of horror in everyday life comes from a British woman, whose pleasant Peruvian vacation ended up.... badly.  What seemed to be an earache or ear infection started making scratching noises.  That's because what was inside her ear was busily chewing away at her flesh.

Treatment of the maggot colony didn't work well at first:

Doctors tried to get the maggots out but the more medics delved into her ear, the more the larvae retreated into Rochelle's head.

Read the whole story, as they say.

Most powerful line from the account: "There was a risk that they were migrating through her head."

Best British understatement of the year: "'I was very scared - I wondered if they were in my brain. I thought to myself "This could be very, very serious."'"

(thanks to saramin)

When volcanoes scream

Scientists studying a recent volcano came up with a grandly Infocultish metaphor to describe one aspect of eruptions. They scream just before exploding.  

Listen.

It's is the sound made by the mountain as it trembles.

Those quakes continuously rose in pitch like a volcanic glissando - a musical glide from one pitch to another...

"Because there's less time between each earthquake, there's not enough time to build up enough pressure for a bigger one. After the frequency glides up to a ridiculously high frequency, it pauses and then it explodes."

Infocult: listening to the earth as it screams.

(photo by bingbing)

Dead man elected

Let it never be said that being dead prevents one from winning office.  

Lenin [great name - ed] Carballido won the election in the town of San Agustin Amatengo after posting pictures of himself alongside slogans like "United for Development".

However, police say Mr Carballido's family produced a death certificate in his name in 2010, when he was under investigation for a gang rape...

Local media reported that the death certificate recorded his death of "natural causes" following a diabetic coma.

To be clear, he was actually alive, but legally dead.  

"When he registered as a candidate, he presented all his paperwork, his birth certificate, a letter stating he had no criminal record," said the PRD's Rey Morales. "He fooled the prosecutors' office, he fooled the office of records, he fooled electoral officials."

Is this a Gothic tale of life after death, or a Gothic villain triumphing?

(thanks to Todd Bryant)