Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Saturn stares back at you

Cassini caught this awesome picture of Saturn's north pole.   NASA says it has "the menacing look of something from the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe".

A horror game about fear

An interesting new computer game emphasizes the player's ability to master his or her fear.  Nevermind is 

an immersive adventure-horror game, in which players are hooked up to heart monitors and, therefore, must learn to control their fear in order to succeed.

It's an insidious game mechanism:

As you explore surreal labyrinths and solve the puzzles of the mind, a biofeeback sensor will monitor how scared or stressed you become moment-to-moment. If you let your fears get the best of you, the game will become harder. If you’re able to calm yourself in the face of terror, the game will be more forgiving.

Yes, the more scared you become, the harder the game gets.  Fiendish!

Chicago Gothic

Merry Christmas from the violent crime world of Chicago:

A teen has confessed to killing his aunt's boyfriend with a hammer, then dismembering the body and placing the head on his aunt's bed, according to prosecutors.

What Christmas angle, besides the date of the killing?

"He wanted to leave his aunt a present," Assistant State's Attorney Kingsley Sawyers said during a court hearing...

Don't miss the comic aspect:

After the slaying in the early hours of Christmas Day, Valdez called 911 to report a death and was asked if he had tried CPR, Sawyers said. Valdez laughed and told the dispatcher that the victim, Silvestre Diaz-Hernandez, 41 had been decapitated...

Ho ho ho!

(thanks to Kevin)

 

More ruins

Today's ruin gallery comes from Distractify, and it's lovely.

These image collections seem to be popping up everywhere. Reflection on our economic woes?

(thanks to Annette)

Clowns fear clown fear

British clowns are concerned at the current wave of clown-fear.

Tony Eldridge, secretary of Clowns International which represents the entertainers in Britain, said the situation had escalated beyond harmless fun. Eldridge, whose clown name is Bluebottle, said: "This is doing clowning no favours and is harming society."

Eldridge/Bluebottle quickly admits to clown-fear:

"The people behind it might see it as a bit of a laugh, but for the victims it can be a horrible experience. "The fear of clowns – coulrophobia – is a real thing and some people will react very badly to this. Not to mention people who are elderly or vulnerable."

The Guardian helpfully adds this image: charming or terrifying?

 

(thanks to Chris Worden)

Deaths by Tudors

The BBC reaches further back in time to reveal bad deaths in the Tudor era.

The occupation of "gong farmer" sounds quite cheerful until you realise it was what the Tudors called people who were paid to clear out the sewage from cesspits.

So what can be said about the drunken Cambridge baker who, while relieving himself, fell backwards into a cesspit on 2 June 1523? He died horribly.

Or, sarcastically:

In 1552, Henry Pert, gentleman, in Welbeck, Nottinghamshire, drew his bow to its full extent with the aim of shooting straight up into the air.

The arrow lodged in the bow, and while he was leaning over to look, the arrow was released. He died the next day. Of embarrassment.

And very elegantly:

Thomas Alsopp of Coventry was standing in the former cemetery of the Coventry Greyfriars under a stone wall on 26 April 1558 when a maypole fell over.

It hit the city wall and knocked a stone out of the top of it, which hit him on the left part of his head and penetrated his brain, killing him instantly.

Yesterday the Beeb did for the Victorians.

(link thanks to Steven Kaye; image via Wikipedia)

Fearing a Facebook group

Some people fear a Facebook group which purports to be for parents, but is really a front for pedophiles.

Snopes explains:

This warning about a Facebook group called "Becoming a father or mother was the greatest gift of my life" supposedly "created by pedophiles whose aim is to access your photos" first hit the Internet in January 2010 and has seen a number of periodic resurgences of circulation via social media ever since.

Is it real?

However, this warning has never been anything more than a hoax: there wasn't a Facebook group named "Becoming a father or mother was the greatest gift of my life" in existence at the time the alert was first circulated, let alone one populated and run by pedophiles. 

Note the Fox News twist at the end.

 

Love Lovecraft style

The excellent Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal webcomic offers a reflection on romance and HP Lovecraft.

Deaths by Victorians

The BBC has an entertaining list of "10 truly bizarre Victorian deaths".  It features unusual deaths by attacking cats, a guts-chewing mouse, a dipsomanic bear, too much propriety, and even a homicidal coffin.

(via Naked Capitalism)

Beware the Christmas pig

Here's another Christmas monster: Sweden's terror sow.

Most commonly referred to as the gloso (other names for it include the galoppso and the gluppso, all translating as ‘galloping sow’), this dire beast is grim in every sense of the word. This is because the gloso is a church grim (or kyrkogrim in Sweden), i.e. a supernatural creature derived from the spirit of an animal or person supposedly sacrificed when the foundation of a church was built, and which now protects the church and its grounds for all eternity, and cannot be killed by any normal weapon.

What exactly does it look like?

Those unfortunate enough to have encountered this terrifying entity liken it in basic appearance to an enormous female domestic pig, usually jet-black in colour (though sometimes ghostly white), but with a ridge of razor-sharp spines or bristles running down the centre of its back, a pair of huge tusks curving out from its jaws, eyes that glow a fiery red, and the fearful yet very real ability to breathe fire.

There are some more horror-style detials:

Other tangible, physical abilities attributed to the gloso, and which thereby distinguish it from insubstantial ghosts or spectres, include its predilection for devouring fresh corpses in the churchyard and for sharpening its tusks upon gravestones. It also leaves visible tracks in its wake.

But do not worry, frenzied Infocult reader.  The gloso isn't all bad.

According to Swedish legend, on the evening of Christmas Day (and also on New Year's Eve) anyone can discover everything that will happen to them during the incoming New Year if they are brave enough to withstand an assault by the gloso. The ritual stipulates that after the sun has set, you must visit four different churches in four different parishes, walk around each church in an anti-clockwise direction, and then blow through the keyhole of each church's door. After blowing through the keyhole of the fourth church's door, if you then peer through it you will witness all of the most notable events that await you in the New Year, rushing before your eyes in a rapid stream of images like a speeded-up movie film.

Gloso goes nicely with Iceland's scary Christmas cat.

(thanks to D'Arcy Norman on the Twitters)