Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

The mutant human needed to survive car crashes

An Australian project came up with a hypothetical human, one presumed to have evolved to better handle the stresses of automobile collisions.  "What if our bodies were built to survive a low impact crash? What might we look like?"

His name is Graham.

Look at his face and chest, where the biggest changes lie:

Dive into the site for videos explaining how Graham is a better crash survivor than you, puny human.

(via MetaFilter)

 

3d printing a dead man's finger to unlock a phone

Michigan police worked with a researcher to use 3d printing in a new, crime-solving way.  They started from a fingerprint scan, then printed it into the 3-dimensional world, in order to use it as a fake finger.  Why?  To unlock a mobile phone.

From a Fusion report:

a man was murdered, and the police think there might be clues to who murdered him stored in his phone. But they can’t get access to the phone without his fingerprint or passcode. So instead of asking the company that made the phone to grant them access, they’re going another route: having the Jain lab create a 3D printed replica of the victim’s fingers. With them, they hope to unlock the phone.

One entertaining detail:

“We don’t know which finger the suspect used,” he told me by phone. “We think it’s going to be the thumb or index finger—that’s what most people use—but we have all ten.”

Mobile phone fear meets 3d printing anxiety?

(thanks to Brenda Landis for the link; finger photo by Quinn Dobrowski)

Gothic murder, Russian gang style

This week Russia offers an example of very cruel murder.  To be fair, the murder happened a decade or so ago; it was only unearthed recently.

Novoselsky was kidnapped by the criminals who later immured him waste [sic or pun?] deep in a barrel with concrete.

He was then abandoned and spent over a week outside a country house in the boiling sun, the network reported.

“Novoselskiy died a long and painful death in a barrel that stood in the sun for a week. After that – on Aslan Gagiev’s order – the barrel was thrown into the Moskva Canal in the Dmitrovsky District (of Moscow Region), at the bottom of which it remained for about 10 years,” the police source said.

Novoseisky "was the chairman of the Kutuzovsky Bank".  

(thanks to Steven "well hydrated, thank you" Kaye)

Human skin clothes for fashion

Here's an Infocult approach to fashion: grow clothes from the DNA of a famous designer.

[G]raduate student Tina Gorjanc has created a line of “human leather” goods. And the leather isn’t from just any ol’ human, but from the skin of iconic fashion designer Alexander McQueen who died in 2010. The project includes McQueen’s DNA from locks of his hair that were sewn into his first collection "Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims."

Another Gothic angle comes from the conceptual project's politics:

"If a student like me was able to patent a material extracted from Alexander McQueen's biological information as there was no legislation to stop me, we can only imagine what big corporations with bigger funding are going to be capable of doing in the future," she tells Dezeen Magazine.

(thanks to Elena and MetaFilter)

Behold the underwater terror of the Bobbit Worm

The undersea world teems with nightmarish horror of all kinds, which we've shamefully neglected here at Infocult.  To start making up for this lack, consider the Bobbit Worm.  

Found in Southeast Asian waters, "[t]hese worms  reach 3 m (~10 FEET) long and are raptorial predators which use spring loaded jaws to capture their prey..."

Yes, spring-loaded jaws. Five pairs of spring-loaded jaws. They look like this:

Wired offers this elevator pitch: "a mix between the Mongolian death worm, the Graboids fromTremors, the Bugs from Starship Troopers, and a rainbow — but it’s a really dangerous rainbow, like in Mario Kart ".

More:

Using five antennae, the bobbit worm senses passing prey, snapping down on them with supremely muscled mouth parts, called a pharynx. It does this with such speed and strength that it can split a fish in two. And that, quite frankly, would be a merciful exit. If you survive initially, you get to find out what it’s like to be yanked into the worm’s burrow and into untold nightmares.

The Bobbit can take down a much larger fish, like so:

Echniblog reminds us that "[o]ne record holder indicates a worm which was nearly SIX meters in length when collected!"

And the name? Wikipedia is concise:

The name is inspired only by the scissorlike jaws of the worm; the common supposition from the name that female eunicids cut off the males' penises is baseless, and the worms in fact lack penises entirely, as they are broadcast spawners.

Much more here.

PS: comment of the year award goes to one "Smut Clyde", who observes:

The Great Google informs me that no-one is selling a "Sexy Bobbit-worm costume". Imagine my sadness.

(thanks to Charles Cameron)

Another sinkhole appears in Florida, tries to eat cars

Florida experienced another sinkhole, as Gaea continued her campaign against the human race.  This time the earth almost ate a car.

Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue spokesman Mike Jachles tells local news outlets that the sinkhole started opening as Dolores Otero drove toward the drive-thru July 7. She stopped but as the ground caved in, the car went nose-first into the water. One of the car’s back tires was left hanging in the air.

Otero and her grandson got safely out of the vehicle, which began to fill with water.

The sinkhole campaign - is it expanding?

We've covered previous Florida sinkhole attacks in 2013 and 2015.

(thanks to Steven "next to be devoured" Kaye)

Getting creative with human brains

From the American northeast comes today's story of Gothic crime.  The gist: an enterprising young man sought an additive for his marijuana hobby, and found it in human brain elbalming fluid.  "A central Pennsylvania man was charged Thursday after police say he sprayed fluid used to embalm a human brain on marijuana that he then smoked."

There are many fine details here:

• It began auspiciously: "Court records indicate Long’s aunt contacted detectives on June 21 after finding a human brain in a department store bag under a porch while cleaning out a trailer."
• Some fine Gothic charges: "State police in Carlisle charged 26-year-old Joshua Lee Long with abuse of a corpse and conspiracy."
• We humans do like to name things: "a coroner concluded the brain was real and that Long supposedly named it Freddy."

(thanks to Brenda Landis, Tammy Snyder, and Clyde Graham)

 

More Pokemon GO fear!

As the global Pokemon GO frenzy spreads, naturally creepy stories are cropping up.  Why "naturally"?  Because we tend to generate disturbing stories about almost every new technological development, trying to haunt the tech that otherwise delights us.

The following stories are of variable veracity, being new and riding the craze wave.

ITEM: police fear Pokemon GO players hurting themselves or getting robbed.

ITEM: pedophiles could use the game to lure young victims.  (Note the use of "could")

ITEM: folks playing Pokemon GO... in the Holocaust Museum.

According to The Washington Post, there are three Pokéstops associated with the museum, which predictably leads to hoards of fans, young and old alike, swarming those areas at any given time.

The museum's communications director, Andrew Hollinger, told The Post, "Playing the game is not appropriate in the museum, which is a memorial to the victims of Nazism. We are trying to find out if we can get the museum excluded from the game."

ITEM: cops are targeting GO players.  Not really, but still:

ITEM: black players face death.

ITEM: Pokemon GO is a government conspiracy.

ITEM: the mobile apps, especially for iOS, snarf down a lot of personal data. For real.

And let's not forget the old Pokemon Satanism urban legend, which is now recirculating.

Previously, we've noted the robbery fear and the surprise floating corpse around this seething Pokemon game.

One additional reason these stories are taking off is that augmented reality hasn't really captured the public imagination.  This game has brought it to our collective attention, and now all of the potential anxieties can fly free.

Another reason: fears about computer games have been running for years, and haven't lost their power.  Ditto mobile computing.

Mobile, AR, gaming - it's really a nice fearsome brew that Pokemon GO has stirred up.

Remember, we try to haunt every technology we make.

(thanks to Todd Bryant, Reason, Snopes, Ed Webb, Jesse Walker)

Look for a Pokemon, get robbed

This week we're seeing some new fear crop up around the intersection of gaming, augmented reality, and mobile devices.  There's a new Pokemon game, Pokemon GO, which lets you collect 'em all in a digital real superimposed on the physical.

Yesterday came a story about one player who, seeking "a Pokémon from a natural water resource", found instead a dead human body.

Today comes a story about would-be robbers in Missouri, who apparently used the app to trap victims in isolated locations.

[P]olice believe the suspects used the phone app, which directs users to capture imaginary creatures superimposed onto the real world, to tempt players into secluded areas where they could be easily robbed. At a certain level in the game, he noted, players can congregate at local landmarks to join teams and battle.

“Using the geolocation feature,” Stringer said, “the robbers were able to anticipate the location and level of seclusion of unwitting victims.”

In a separate statement, a department spokesperson added: “you can add a beacon to a pokestop to lure more players. Apparently they were using the app to locate [people] standing around in the middle of a parking lot or whatever other location they were in.”

AR gaming fear really hasn't been a thing. Maybe Pokemon GO pushes it forward.

After all, at least one photographer managed to catch someone playing the game in front of H.R. Giger street art:

(link thanks to Ed Webb; photo by Robert Couse-Smith)

Look for a Pokemon, find a dead body

An augmented reality game led one player to the Gothic this week.  A Pokemon player, instructed to find one of that game's creatures digitally located on the physical plane, instead found quiet horror:

"I was trying to get a Pokémon from a natural water resource."

She said she climbed over a fence to get down to the river.

“I was walking towards the bridge along the shore when I saw something in the water,” Ms Wiggins said. “I had to take a second look and I realized it was a body.”

She said the body appeared to be that of a man dressed in black and was floating three feet from the shore.

Freshly deposited man in black, too.

It's a nice series of juxtapositions: playfulness and the most serious; free-floating digital and a floating corpse.

There's also an interesting side story involving the cops:

Police in Australia were forced to make an official statement about the game on Friday after users kept trying to get into a Darwin police station to capture the character Sandshrew, who was apparently inside.

“Whilst the Darwin Police Station may feature as a Pokestop, please be advised that you don't actually have to step inside in order to gain the pokeballs,” a police spokesperson wrote on Facebook.

(thanks to Ed Webb)