Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Skating on an ice rink populated with dead fish

A Japanese skating rink offered a Gothic attraction to would-be skaters. Embedded within this ice were thousands of dead fish.

The conceit was all about the creatures' suffering, it seems:

Fish, crabs and other shellfish were embedded in the ice as part of a special winter attraction, called "Freezing Port," at Japan's Space World theme park.

 

The park advertised it as a "world first" and posted images of the fish on its official Facebook site with captions including "I am d... d... drowning, s ... s... suffocating."

Organizers claimed it was popular, but online outrage led to the rink's rebooting.

 

(thanks to Todd Bryant)

Creepy Google Deep Dream video

What nightmares can Google's Deep Dream artificial intelligence create with our images? Here's one.  Be sure to click through for the mind-melting video:

As Nacho says:

Yes you do want to see a frog video through Google dream filter thing because your nightmares aren't fun enough.

As Digg observes,

DON'T BE EVIL, THEY SAID

Running A Frog Through Google Deep Dream Produces A Nightmare Blob

It's all pretty straight forward math, really. Frog plus neural network equals constantly shifting terror orb.

Two nice creepy audio tracks

A recent broadcast from WFMU's Noise and Syrup show contains two nicely creepy and Infocultish audio tracks.

The show is long, a little over three hours, but you can click through to the tracks in question from the playlist page.

The first one is a spoken word piece, "Isle of the Dead" by Willem De Ridder (from his Snuff album).  It starts almost exactly at 1:00, ends around 1:21, and is a weird story about a man exploring a town in search of... well, listen. There are echoes of Ligotti and Cortazar.

The second is an intro to EVP, a recording called Ghost Orchid.  There's a history and sketch of the EVP field, followed by some samples.  It starts around 2:01, and goes on for a while.

The rest of the >3 hours program is also worth listening to, but is mostly music, rather than spoken word.  Those tracks should set the mood nicely.

We live in the age of killfies

How many people get killed while taking selfies? A new paper investigates this, and offers a charming neologism: killfie.

Some interesting findings:

We found that most common reason of selfie death was height-related. These involve people falling off buildings or mountains while trying to take dangerous selfies... The second most popular category was being hit by trains. We found that taking selfies on train tracks is a trend.

and

Another prominent reason of selfie casualties that we infer from Figure 3 is water-related risks. After analyzing the water-related incidents, we found that often people took selfies while being in a water body or in close proximity to one. They ended up drowning by losing their body balance and falling into the water body.

"Killfie."  Word of the year!

Behind you: well done creepy cartoons

Behind You is a fine series of creepy cartoons, somewhere in the dark, witty interzone between Chas Addams and Edward Gorey.  Each item is a slightly animated gif, with a caption below.  

By "slightly animated" know that many will look like static images.  Give them a few seconds to develop, even a half minute.  You'll see.

For example, this little story about an elevator:

For those of you following the Great Clown Panic of 2016, here's a good one:

These are cute and witty, like this one with a neatly bivalent caption. But there's also a bleakness to many, a sense of entropy and dread.  Children are often doomed by the world, as in this nearly Giger-esque example.

(via MetaFilter)

For your terrifying rear view window needs

Here's a fine Infocult accessory for your car: big scary decals mounted on the rear windshield.  

They only appear when another car's very high beams strikes them, so it's an act of traffic retribution.

 

(thanks to Randy McCall)

“there was a significant amount of dissolving": melted to death in Yellowstone

This summer a man fell into a hot spring at Yellowstone, and melted to death.

The nameless "thermal feature" or "acidic mud pot" into which he tumbled was superheated ("the thermometer was off the charts", according to one ranger) and highly acidic.  Therefore, in a matter gladdening the hearts of mad scientists everywhere,

“In a very short order, there was a significant amount of dissolving,” [Lorant Veress, a Yellowstone deputy chief ranger] told KULR.

"[T]here was a significant amount of dissolving" indeed.  

Another ranger observed that "[r]ecovery efforts were terminated... because [rangers] could not locate any remains."

It's like an Edward Gorey cartoon:

"Somehow, Colin Scott slipped, and as his sister watched, the 23-year-old tumbled into one of the boiling springs. Despite her immediate call for help and the prolonged search efforts by park staff, her brother was never seen again..."

(photo of some hot spring in Yellowstone, probably not the one in the story, by the excellent Derek Bruff)

A sinkhole gallery

How will sinkholes destroy civilization? This Guardian gallery of fine sinkholes offers a vision of the future.

For example, from Guatemala City, this beauty:

(thanks to Steven "Not a mole man" Kaye)

Behold the soft robot that eats things

British scientists, ever eager to regain the mad science mantle, have built a robot that is a) soft and b) eats things.

According to New Scientist, it's a "Soft robot with a mouth and gut [that] can forage for its own food".

The Mail sees it quite clearly: "Robotics experts has developed a soft robot capable of consuming organic material for energy, effectively creating a machine which digests living things."

Yes, we can get technical, but you get the idea:

By opening its “mouth”, made from a soft polymer membrane, the robot can suck in a belly full of water and biomatter. The artificial gut – a microbial fuel cell (MFC) – is filled with greedy microbes that break down the biomass and convert its chemical energy into electrical energy, which powers the robot. Digested waste matter is then expelled out the rear end, just as more water is sucked in the front for the next feed.

And this is how it becomes a threat to humanity: "With every mouthful, the robot’s reserves are replenished, so in theory it could roam indefinitely."  Oh yes.

(thanks to Jesse "The Last Human to be Devoured" Walker)

Sinkhole rips into Japan

The Earth's campaign against the human race turned to Japan this week, as another sinkhole opened up in a city:

The hole opened in the heart of Fukuoka, a major city in southern Japan, swallowing parts of the main street and cutting off power, water and gas supplies to parts of the city.

According to one account, “'The electricity went off suddenly and I head a loud boom,' Kyodo news agency quoted a witness a witness as saying. 'I went outside and saw a huge hole.'”

Click here for a splendid clip of the initial sinkholes collapsing into the big one.

(thanks to Ed Webb and Todd Bryant)