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Cordyceps Headache posted:I can't remember is Prosopagnosia(also known as "face blindness") has been posted yet, but it's always freaked me out. I was reminded of it by Arrested Development today. Completely serious here: I have a moderate case of faceblindness (there's a test they give you, 85+ is normal, I scored a 60). It's pretty much just really annoying - all my friends either think I'm crazy (everyone I see is CLEARLY a celebrity! come on guys don't you see it?!) or think I'm a jerk for not recognizing them  also I get a lot of "SO WE ALL LOOK THE SAME TO YOU HUH?"I basically compensate by being very good at remembering people based on their hairstyle/color, clothes they're wearing and mannerisms (how they walk, hold themselves etc). I sometimes still have trouble finding my own mom in a crowd though 
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May 29, 2013 06:11
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Cordyceps Headache posted:For more fun, see Akinetopsia, also known as "motion blindness": The idea of someone who can't perceive motion being behind the wheel of an automobile is goddamn terrifying.
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May 29, 2013 06:49
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Ok, it's not from Wikipedia, but I guarantee you that it will haunt your dreams. It's an artificial speech device from the 1800s. How disturbing can this possibly be? Well, let's find out!  http://blog.modernmechanix.com/grandmother-of-pedro-the-voder/#more Just think of that thing, wheezing out some semblance of human speech.
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May 29, 2013 08:19
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Khazar-khum posted:Ok, it's not from Wikipedia, but I guarantee you that it will haunt your dreams. It's an artificial speech device from the 1800s. How disturbing can this possibly be? In theory, it could have sounded like the speaking piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muCPjK4nGY4 //edit for PYF video rule: It's a piano that plays notes approximating human speech. Artemis J Brassnuts has a new favorite as of 08:52 on May 29, 2013 |
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May 29, 2013 08:49
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Artemis J Brassnuts posted:In theory, it could have sounded like the speaking piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muCPjK4nGY4 There sure are some weird pianos out there. Cat organ - Wikipedia edit: this is perfectly work- and mind-safe, just pretty silly in a slightly creepy way.
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May 29, 2013 09:02
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Artemis J Brassnuts posted:In theory, it could have sounded like the speaking piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muCPjK4nGY4 It's not the sound so much as it is the disembodied head.
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May 29, 2013 09:10
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Cordyceps Headache posted:I can't remember is Prosopagnosia(also known as "face blindness") has been posted yet, but it's always freaked me out. I was reminded of it by Arrested Development today. That article linked me to another creepy condition, Capgras delusion. Basically you still have the ability to recognize faces and all that, but you're convinced that all the people in your life have been replaced by imposters that look exactly like them. It sounds sort of funny just typed/summarized like that, but I saw a documentary about a woman with this and it was incredibly sad both for her and her family.
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May 29, 2013 13:17
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Memento1979 posted:There sure are some weird pianos out there. Let Nick Cave tell you about it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj4RBmU-PIo Link is safe for work, though your co-workers may think you're a weirdo.
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May 29, 2013 15:14
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Kimmalah posted:That article linked me to another creepy condition, Capgras delusion. Basically you still have the ability to recognize faces and all that, but you're convinced that all the people in your life have been replaced by imposters that look exactly like them. It sounds sort of funny just typed/summarized like that, but I saw a documentary about a woman with this and it was incredibly sad both for her and her family. That in turn leads to Fregoli Delusion quote:The Fregoli delusion, or the delusion of doubles, is a rare disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that different people are in fact a single person who changes appearance or is in disguise It's like the old bad disguise that everyone else fails to recognize trope, except the person is doing it to torment you. It seems like every episode of The Outer Limits/Twilight Zone has some corresponding mental illness.
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May 29, 2013 15:25
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:Completely serious here: I have a moderate case of faceblindness (there's a test they give you, 85+ is normal, I scored a 60). It's pretty much just really annoying - all my friends either think I'm crazy (everyone I see is CLEARLY a celebrity! come on guys don't you see it?!) or think I'm a jerk for not recognizing them I have prosopagnosia too - in fact, that's why my avatar looks the way it does. It used to just be a little girl but I made the mistake of posting an Ask/Tell thread about having prosopagnosia and a bunch of people didn't believe me and liked to try to test me by seeing if I'd recognize an extremely iconic photograph of George Bush because if I did I was obviously lying about having been diagnosed with a brain disorder when I was a teenager or something, I guess?  (I don't know what test you're talking about, though, much less what score I might have gotten if they'd given it to me. Maybe they didn't have it yet, or maybe I've just forgotten, since this was in the late '90s for me.) [Ed.: for the record I realized my avatar had been altered but had to have a roommate come look at it and say who it was because it didn't match the iconic photo anymore once it was photoshopped onto a small Victorian child]I use the same compensatory methods as you but usually try to rely on voice if I can because people keep changing their hairstyles and clothing. The thing I find most interesting is that there's no problem telling that a thing IS a face (I can still detect smiley-face lookin' patterns such as the fact that American wall outlets look like they are very surprised and so on), just remembering WHICH/WHOSE face it is. I feel like this implies things about how complicated the human brain is.
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May 29, 2013 17:42
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:Completely serious here: I have a moderate case of faceblindness (there's a test they give you, 85+ is normal, I scored a 60). It's pretty much just really annoying - all my friends either think I'm crazy (everyone I see is CLEARLY a celebrity! come on guys don't you see it?!) or think I'm a jerk for not recognizing them I didn't realize there was an official test for that. I've suspected that I may have a mild form of it for a while, and last week I spent 15 minutes talking to a stranger thinking she was an acquaintance of mine, when the acquaintance was on the other side of the bar, just because they had similar hairsyles. A couple months ago, I completely failed to recognize the same acquaintance because she gained about 30 pounds. For content continuing the theme of brain disorders, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard_delusion . Cotard delusion, in which the sufferer thinks they have died or otherwise ceased to exist, despite being able to perceive and interact with the world around them. The idea that the brain can go so profoundly wrong that it jumps to the conclusion "I no longer exist" despite all available evidence is profoundly creepy.
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May 29, 2013 18:36
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jalopybrown posted:That in turn leads to Fregoli Delusion What if those supposed dopplegangered people are in the same room?
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May 29, 2013 18:41
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Kimmalah posted:That article linked me to another creepy condition, Capgras delusion. Basically you still have the ability to recognize faces and all that, but you're convinced that all the people in your life have been replaced by imposters that look exactly like them. It sounds sort of funny just typed/summarized like that, but I saw a documentary about a woman with this and it was incredibly sad both for her and her family. I know a woman who developed something like this a few years back as a part of Postpartum psychosis, which is the sudden onset of severe mental illness shortly after giving birth. My mum went around to see her and the new baby a few days after she got out of the hospital, and found her hysterically ranting to her husband that they had replaced the baby with a robotic doll that looked like her baby, but wasn't.  A short stay in the local mental health unit and some well-judged medication later, and she was fine, but still, aargh. The idea that childbirth can just totally make a previously mentally well person snap for a little while is a scary one, especially as there have been cases where women have killed themselves or their children while suffering from it.
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May 29, 2013 19:58
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Closet Cyborg posted:I've suspected that I may have a mild form of it for a while, and last week I spent 15 minutes talking to a stranger thinking she was an acquaintance of mine, when the acquaintance was on the other side of the bar, just because they had similar hairsyles. A couple months ago, I completely failed to recognize the same acquaintance because she gained about 30 pounds. One thing I've always meant to look into a bit closer to see if anyone has... looked into it a bit closer... is Dyscalculia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia) I have Dyscalculia and poor facial recognition has gotten me into trouble a few times, particularly when I was working the front desk at a veterinary hospital. It was compounded by transposing numbers when punching things into the register, so I had "hilarious" mishaps like cheerfully greeting clients who had just been in earlier that day and were coming in to pick up their recently euthanized pet, or transposing numbers and charging them the wrong amount for said euthanasia.  I'm pretty sure both Prosopagnosia and Dyscalculia are in the parietal lobe, possibly even the same side of the brain, so I've always been curious if there's actually a link between that aspect of them at all.
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May 29, 2013 20:19
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments_in_the_Revival_of_Organisms This always creeped me out. Hell of a scientific achievement though (or not, i'm not a scientist).
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May 29, 2013 21:22
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The wiki page mentions the "Cambridge Face Memory Test" as a test for faceblindness so it might have been that, though the article they cited also mentions other tests so I'm not sure which one I got. My psychologist showed me a bunch of faces, and I had to pair up similar ones, or say if I had seen a particular one in a series before, etc. Like I said I'm not TOTALLY lost when it comes to face recognition, but beyond very general things (IE fat face, thin face, stuff like that) I can't really remember finer details or tell faces apart based on them.
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May 30, 2013 06:15
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Tibor posted:If you're into the whole nuclear apocalypse thing you should read 'On The Beach' by Nevil Shute. It starts off fairly slowly but that just helps to build a creeping sense of inevitability. Then you reach the last 20 or so pages and you sob like an infant and feel distraught for the rest of the week (if you're me). Late, but there is an utterly heart-wrenching film adaptation. Most moved I've ever been by a movie.
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May 30, 2013 09:55
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MoreLikeTen posted:Late, but there is an utterly heart-wrenching film adaptation. Most moved I've ever been by a movie. Is it the one where David Niven races a car and other cars explode and then everyone goes fishing and drinking and singing?
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May 30, 2013 11:43
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Even though it's not specified what ended the world, I still think that The Road is the most gut-wrenching, depression-fuel ever written. I quite liked the movie too. Not sure if this has been posted, but apparently Lovecraftian nightmares inhabit Indiana: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawfordsville_monster
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May 30, 2013 13:39
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Closet Cyborg posted:For content continuing the theme of brain disorders, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard_delusion . Cotard delusion, in which the sufferer thinks they have died or otherwise ceased to exist, despite being able to perceive and interact with the world around them. The idea that the brain can go so profoundly wrong that it jumps to the conclusion "I no longer exist" despite all available evidence is profoundly creepy. New Scientist posted a piece about that a few days ago. quote:Eight months later, he told his doctor his brain had died or was, at best, missing. "It's really hard to explain," he says. "I just felt like my brain didn't exist any more. I kept on telling the doctors that the tablets weren't going to do me any good because I didn't have a brain. I'd fried it in the bath." At least he got better. (Sort of?)
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May 30, 2013 15:11
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Target Practice posted:Oh man The Jaunt is fantastic. I would love too see that story as a Short(movie). I liked the short stories posted and would love to read more that leave me with an empty feeling if anyone has them.
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May 30, 2013 15:34
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The Road definitely is one of the most horrifying books I've read. The way it was written is just depressing, all hope is gone and the only joy is the small child's innocence which is increasingly being destroyed as they try to travel south to escape the freezing winter. "On their journey, the duo scrounge for food, evade roving bands, and contend with horrors such as a newborn infant roasted on a spit, and captives being gradually harvested as food." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_road Give it a read or watch the movie, although they left the roasting infant out in the movie I think they handled the ending a bit better in it. What really gets to me about these types of situations is that I can really see people doing whatever it takes to survive, such as treating people like animals and slaves.
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May 30, 2013 16:03
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Fried Watermelon posted:The Road definitely is one of the most horrifying books I've read. The way it was written is just depressing, all hope is gone and the only joy is the small child's innocence which is increasingly being destroyed as they try to travel south to escape the freezing winter. The newborn on the spit itself wasn't nearly as horrifying to me as the fact of people deliberately impregnating women for food.
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May 30, 2013 16:08
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Well that makes as much sense as the robots in The Matrix using humans as batteries.
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May 30, 2013 16:12
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bascule posted:The newborn on the spit itself wasn't nearly as horrifying to me as the fact of people deliberately impregnating women for food. On the one hand yes it's very horrific. On the other, that seems like a really dumb inefficient strategy for food if you're a weirdo like me and start thinking about the logistics of it. 
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May 30, 2013 16:15
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Seriously, "Let's feed this hormonal, starved woman twice the amount of food she'd normally need for nine months, and at the the end of that we'll have about 8 pounds worth of food!" On the other hand, I have to applaud these survivor's ability to delay gratification and plan ahead, I suppose. For what it's worth, I don't remember that from the book (But then I was sick as all get out when I read it, it was a pretty surreal experience.)
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May 30, 2013 16:22
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If that's really what their plan consisted of, then that is an extremely stupid and inefficient way to obtain food. There's probably something more to it it in the book.
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May 30, 2013 16:27
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Talking about food, something that has always struck me was the effect of the siege of Leningrad; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_the_Siege_of_Leningrad_on_the_cityquote:After heavy German bombing in August, September, and October 1941, all main food warehouses were destroyed and burned in massive fires. Huge amounts of stored food reserves, such as grain, flour and sugar, as well as other stored food, were completely destroyed. In one instance, melted sugar from the warehouses had flowed through the floors into the surrounding soil. Desperate citizens began digging up the frozen earth in an attempt to extract the sugar. This soil was on sale in the 'Haymarket' to housewives who tried to melt the earth to separate the sugar or to others who merely mixed this earth with flour.[14] The fires continued all over the city, because the Germans were bombing Leningrad non-stop for many months using various kinds of incendiary and high-explosive devices during 1941, 1942, and 1943.
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May 30, 2013 16:34
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Phlegmish posted:If that's really what their plan consisted of, then that is an extremely stupid and inefficient way to obtain food. There's probably something more to it it in the book. This isn't at all what happens in the book, nor is McCarthy particularly concerned with it.
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May 30, 2013 16:51
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Phlegmish posted:If that's really what their plan consisted of, then that is an extremely stupid and inefficient way to obtain food. There's probably something more to it it in the book. Its not really explained at all in the book, but yeah I would say 'theres something more to it' than logistics.
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May 30, 2013 19:46
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Kimmalah posted:On the one hand yes it's very horrific. On the other, that seems like a really dumb inefficient strategy for food if you're a weirdo like me and start thinking about the logistics of it. Thank god I'm not the only one.
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May 30, 2013 20:54
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A woman just happened to be pregnant, so they capitalized on it (so to speak) by eating the newborn. I'd imagine that the woman would either be used for rape and incidentally would create 'food', or that she was pregnant and gave birth during the time they planned to eat her anyway. Eating the child was borne from coincidence; not planning.
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May 30, 2013 21:01
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50 Foot Ant posted:I read a good series where it turns out that humans were actually pretty on par on the weapon side of things. Not interstellar weapons, but regular weaponry. While we didn't have laser beams, our kinetic weaponry was seriously good. The aliens landed, thinking "Oh, another race to enslave" and the next thing they knew there were missiles everywhere, planes that flew stupid-fast (breaking the sound barrier by multiple grades and STILL fighting at speeds like that), tanks that could survive inside nuclear fireballs and still fight, and all the crazy poo poo that humans just go "It's good, but could it be BETTER?" that just boggled their minds. Where can I find this book?
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May 30, 2013 21:04
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I only read The Road once years ago so I can't remember, but was the baby confirmed alive? If it was still-born then it would make fine sense to go ahead and eat it.
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May 30, 2013 21:33
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They find it already blackened so there's no indication of its state before then.
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May 30, 2013 21:49
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Supreme Allah posted:I only read The Road once years ago so I can't remember, but was the baby confirmed alive? If it was still-born then it would make fine sense to go ahead and eat it. I pretty sure the implication was that there was a roving band of powerful cannibals that kept women as slaves to birth babies to eat.
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May 31, 2013 02:08
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Fried Watermelon posted:The Road definitely is one of the most horrifying books I've read. The way it was written is just depressing, all hope is gone and the only joy is the small child's innocence which is increasingly being destroyed as they try to travel south to escape the freezing winter. I read The Road a while ago (during a particularly rough period of my depression) and it pretty much haunted me for a week. I should go back in time and elbow the friend that suggested it to me. 
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May 31, 2013 03:01
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Vanderdeath posted:I read The Road a while ago (during a particularly rough period of my depression) and it pretty much haunted me for a week. I should go back in time and elbow the friend that suggested it to me. Now go read Room: Wikipedia posted:The novel begins on the fifth birthday of Jack, who lives with his Ma in Room, a small enclosed space containing a small kitchen, a bathtub, a wardrobe, a bed and a TV set. Since it is all he has ever known, Jack likes living in Room and believes that it constitutes the real world, while everything he sees on TV is completely separate and not real. It's a terrifyingly realistic account of the situation both before and after release, and was inspired by a real-life case.
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May 31, 2013 04:30
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Not sure if someone's posted it, but I was reading about mass hysteria on an earlier page and immediately thought of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518 It links to an entire page on dancing mania. I thought it was just an isolated thing, but apparently outbreaks of mass dancing to the point of dropping dead from exhaustion or heat stroke was just something that happened in Europe every once in a while, for a couple of centuries.
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May 31, 2013 04:36
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Prof. Moriarty posted:Now go read Room: This is the case I think it is based on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case quote:The Fritzl property in Amstetten is a building dating from around 1890 and a newer building, which was added after 1978, when Fritzl applied for a building permit for an "extension with basement". In 1983, building inspectors visited the site and verified that the new extension had been built according to the dimensions specified on the building permit. Fritzl had illegally enlarged the room by excavating space for a much larger basement, concealed by walls. Around 1981 or 1982, according to his statement,[13] he started to turn this hidden cellar into a prison cell and installed a washbasin, a toilet, a bed, a hot plate and a refrigerator. In 1983, he added more space by creating a passageway to a pre-existing basement area under the old part of the property, of which only he knew.
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May 31, 2013 04:55
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