Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

The cinema of internet addiction

Some internet addiction movies are hitting the Sundance festival, according to Wired. 

(thanks to Gabor Por)

The abysmal sounds of the deep Earth

An artist with her mind on the subterranean has recorded sounds from 30,000 feet under the Earth's surface.  Lotte Geevan says: "For this project I travelled to the deepest open hole in the world to find out about it’s mysteries and to record the sound of the earth."

Listen:

The sound of the earth from Lotte Geeven on Vimeo.

The first time Geeven listened to the sound with proper headphones, she recalls feeling overwhelmed by what she heard. ”All the hair on my arm stood up straight and if I hear it now again after many times it still has the same effect on me,” she says. The sound was like rumbling thunder, or the oncoming roar of a tornado ripping through the sky. “

Beautiful.  Lotte Geevan, you are an Infocult hero.

Ghosts in the machine

Sometimes your computer is just haunted.

The linked discussion is entertaining for Infocult's purposes, including nice movie references.

(thanks to Charles Cameron)

Irish cannibalism

Ireland's Independent offers a story of contemporary cannibalism.

The condensed version is marvelous: "The suspect claimed he killed his victim following a row over a chess move -- and then ate his heart."

The chess aspect is a nice touch.

Now, the extended description offers some ultra-violence:

Mr O'Gorman... was... attacked and stabbed with a kitchen knife a number of times but managed to fight off his assailant.

He was then beaten several times over the head with a dumbbell.

There were a number of stab wounds to the body and blunt-force trauma to the head. The chest cavity had been opened with a knife.

Sources revealed that the post-mortem examination was unable to establish if the victim was dead before his body was mutilated.

A tantalizing bit of evidence, perhaps:

A source said: "The victim's heart was intact but the PM confirms that a lung was removed from the body and has not been located."

These true-life anthropophagy stories keep on appearing.

Irish Gothic previously on Infocult.

(thanks to Saramin)

Glaciers yield up frozen WWI dead

Glaciers in the Italian Alps have thawed enough to render access to the bodies of WWI soldiers.

The bodies, when they came, were often mummified. The two soldiers interred last September were blond, blue-eyed Austrians aged 17 and 18 years old, who died on the Presena glacier and were buried by their comrades, top-to-toe, in a crevasse. Both had bulletholes in their skulls. 

(thanks to Jesse "Too Southern for that Kind of Weather" Walker)

Robot baby appalls New York City

This prank-slash-ad is a delightful Gothic intrusion into city life.  

You might do best to start at :09 to begin in mad science mode.

Call it the animatronic reborn baby.

(thanks to Annette)

Fearing Google: the Nest expansion

A new way to fear Google appears in this GigaOM article.  Google is purchasing Nest, a home thermostat etc business.  

Connecting NSA-compliant Google with domestic spaces breeds fears automatically.

hackers and security researchers...warn how easy some of the devices are to exploit — gaining control of data or even video streams about what’s going on in the home...

Perhaps we should expect more of this as the acquisition progresses.

(thanks to Todd Bryant)

Glimpses of a bone house

A new project describes an Austrian bone house, or "beinhaus... or charnel house, is the place at a church or graveyard where the bones of the deceased are kept after exhumation."

As one would decorate a grave with flowers, the skulls were painted by the local gravedigger. Earth pigments were used, and the women’s skulls were painted with colorful flowers, the men’s with ivy leaves. The deceased’s date of birth and death were written on their forehead.

(thanks to Thomas Burkdall)

Texting = death by gunfire

A retired cop shot a man to death for texting in a movie theater.  Naturally, this occurred in Florida.

Caught in the eye

British scientists have managed to extract images from people's eyeballs.  It's the classic crime story fantasy of catching out a murderer by examining the victim's eyes.

No word on if the eyeball must be attached to a living person in order to work correctly.