Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

A few films and videos for Halloween

Diverse videos and films to cross our screens on Halloween in 2015:

The very strange and way ahead of its time vision of terrifying Gothic media "The Stone Tape" (1972) is on YouTube.

 

 

A classic X-Files episode, "Humbug" (1995), written by the criminally brilliant Darin Morgan.

An episode of Batman: The Animated Series featuring everyone's favorite fearsome villain, Scarecrow: "Nothing To Fear" (1992).

A new horror film, Frankenstein's Army (2013), remixes several genres: war movie, found footage, dieselpunk, and undead monsters.

 

(X-Files screenshot from Tor.com)

Two little stories for today

In honor of Halloween Jezebel assembled a group of short-short scary stories.  Most are in the urban legend mode, and the first nine are ok.

Number 10, "Connie", is much better, and very sad.

The last one, "Look at Me", is excellent.  Scroll down for that at the very least.

(via Metafilter)

Dead comet flies nearby, looks like skull

Astronomers at JPL photographed a comet hurtling close to the Earth, and it looks very much like a flying skull.

Poetically, Gothically, it seems to be dead.

Scientists observing asteroid 2015 TB145 with NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, have determined that the celestial object is more than likely a dead comet that has shed its volatiles after numerous passes around the sun.

Helpfully, JPL turned a stack of TB145 images into an animated gif.

The Earth turns her wrath against American football

The Earth's campaign against human civilization opened a new front this week, firing off a sinkhole to attack an American football game.

[T]he field at Levi’s Stadium partially caved in when Ravens kicker Justin Tucker planted his foot on a field-goal try during Sunday’s game...

[Tucker’s plant foot] disappeared like he was walking through a Lord of the Rings-style bog.

Tucker missed the 45-yard field goal but — good news — he was able to pull his [foot?] out of the field, ensuring he wouldn’t become a modern-day Jimmy Hoffa.

Gaia is still on the march.  Beware, humanity! watch the sod!

(thanks to Joe Murphy)

Americans are pretty afraid of technology

Americans fear a lot of things, and our second-biggest terror is technology.  That's according to a recent Chapman University survey, directly titled "America's Top Fears 2015".

For big categories, only what disasters humans can inflict on the world without necessarily involving technology came out ahead:

On average, Americans expressed the highest levels of fear about man-made disasters, such as terrorist attacks, followed by fears about technology, including corporate and government tracing of personal data ...

Narrowed down to specific fears, technology looms large again:

Scroll down for the Complete List of Fears, which is revealing, often unsurprising, and can be fine fodder for story ideas if you randomly combine any two or three.  Beware the agin clowns!  Cyberterrorists use insects to steal your identity!

New Ligotti interview

A new Penguin edition of Thomas Ligotti's fiction has appeared, and this elicited a rare thing: a new interview with Ligotti.

(thanks to Steven Kaye)

"Father Cares": an early Jonestown audio program

"Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown" is a 1981 NPR audio story about the Jonestown horror.  It's a powerful mix of fiction (an invented narrator), archival tape, and experimental structure.  This PRX podcast combines selections from "Father" with recent reflections.

Strongly recommended.

(picture via Wikipedia)

Small, local horrors

Cracked has a nice selection of little-known and local horrors.  Dix tales of body parts, creepy statues, hacks, murders, mysterious voices, and animal bits falling rom the sky.

(thanks to Infocult's daughter)

Fear the selfie

The meme of dangerous selfies is starting to catch on.  For example, the BBC ran a story this week surveying risky ways to take a photo of oneself.

It included this sign from a Russian anti-stupid-selfi campaign:

The Beeb led off with this hilarious Australian photo: The British should not be too cocky, however.  Your humble blogger recalls seeing people crowding Westminster Bridge this January, striding out into typically berserk London traffic to take pictures of themselves in front of Big Ben, selfie sticks waggling.

So will the selfie become the next big cyberfear source, or merely a point of media humor?

More sinkholes open up under countries on opposite ends of the Earth

Sinkholes ripped out the ground from under two English-speaking nations on either end of the Earth this week.

In Britain, a pit yawned right through a street and bits of St. Albans lawns.

Residents reported hearing a crash as the 10-metre-deep hole, measuring 20 metres in diametre, opened up on Fontmell Close in St Albans, 40 kilometres northwest of London, overnight, the BBC reported.

It only narrowly missed houses on the street, with one front yard almost completely swallowed.

The road had completely collapsed, cutting electricity, water and gas to 52 homes of Fontmell Close and Bridle Close, which runs off it. 

And in Australia, a hole ate up a corner of Queensland.

A 'football-pitch-sized' sinkhole which opened up at a campsite in Queensland, Australia, has been explored by scuba divers. During the evening of 26 September, a 140m wide and 2.7m deep hole engulfed tents, vehicles and a mobile home as hundreds of campers were forced to flee, but no one was hurt.

No casualties in these two attacks?  No matter.  Gaia is patient in her campaign against us.

(thanks to Todd Bryant and Steven Kaye)