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obscurer en tut posted:But what's the Spanish-sounding language? He was calling a phone line meant for phone company technicians in Montreal. What could that Spanish-sounding language ever have been? It's French.
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Oct 6, 2013 13:19
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Who put Bella in the Wych-Elm? There's a better write-up here. Short version: a woman is found dead, stuffed in a tree, with her hand chopped off and buried nearby. The police aren't able to identify her or any suspects. The case pretty much hits a dead end until graffiti pops up in a nearby town asking the above question. The police continue to be unable to solve anything, though theories range from witchcraft to WWII espionage. The graffiti continued to show up in the local area up until 1999.
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Oct 6, 2013 15:58
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Phone Phreaking was a vital skill in the early days of computer subculture. Cracked C64 games (or whoever) would frequently have various BBS numbers to dial; if you couldn't get free long distance, dialing into one of those BBSs was hella expensive.
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Oct 6, 2013 18:33
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A Pinball Wizard posted:I thought it was pretty much established that they went to live with the natives? Like no we do not have 100% proof that they're not partying with the Greys on planet Xarblat, but there was a local tribe called the Croatan, and there were tons of reports in the following years of "English captives" in the local native tribes. (They weren't necessarily captives, tons of people throughout the colonial period used to run away to join the local tribes, who were in general more egalitarian and had a higher standard of living than the settlers. It was especially common among slaves and military deserters.) Yeah, there's really no evidence whatsoever that they were abducted, but lack of evidence doesn't tend to stop abduction theorists. There's slightly more evidence of the colonists dying in an attempt to return to England, as well as there being a little bit for relocating the camp, but while they hold more water than alien abduction theories, that's not exactly difficult. It's pretty safe to assume they integrated with the native population, as that theory has the most evidence in it's favor. The only creepy thing about the story in my opinion is putting yourself in the mindset of the explorers returning after three years to find the village completely deserted with no signs of struggle or evacuation due to emergency. Considering the fact that there's still a handful people living in Pripyat, even after the Chernobyl disaster, a village being completely abandoned without a trace* as to specifically why would be kind of creepy at the time. *according to the limited understanding at the time of how to find out about things like this
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Oct 6, 2013 19:56
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Backyard Blacksmith posted:Yeah, there's really no evidence whatsoever that they were abducted, but lack of evidence doesn't tend to stop abduction theorists. There's no way anybody's still in Pripyat. That place is so heavily irradiated that you'd get radiation sickness and be dead in a week. They make visitors wear dosimeter badges and give them strict time limits for when to leave so that they don't get sick.
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Oct 6, 2013 23:01
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Backyard Blacksmith posted:There's slightly more evidence of the colonists dying in an attempt to return to England I hadn't heard about this. Did they still have a ship or did they try to build one or what? quote:The only creepy thing about the story in my opinion is putting yourself in the mindset of the explorers returning after three years to find the village completely deserted with no signs of struggle or evacuation due to emergency. Agreed. It's pretty easy to sit here 400 years later and talk about how dumb those guys are for expecting nothing to change in 3 years, but it would've been creepy as hell at the time, I'm sure. And I wasn't trying to imply you believed they were abducted or anything, that was tongue in cheek. I bet if I looked I could find that crazy-haired stoner dude from Ancient Aliens saying they were though!
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Oct 6, 2013 23:25
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Jack Gladney posted:There's no way anybody's still in Pripyat. That place is so heavily irradiated that you'd get radiation sickness and be dead in a week. They make visitors wear dosimeter badges and give them strict time limits for when to leave so that they don't get sick. There are people still living on the outskirts of the exclusion zone, and people involved in managing the area can live there for a weeks at a time. As you get closer to the reactor access gets tighter and your allowed to spend less time. Pripyat is right near the reactor, no one lives there.
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Oct 7, 2013 00:08
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BSAA Star Dust accident On August 2nd, 1947, an airliner flying from Buenos Aires to Santiago went missing. The last transmission from the airplane made it famous: quote:The last Morse code message sent by Star Dust was "ETA SANTIAGO 17.45 HRS STENDEC".[11] The Chilean Air Force radio operator at the Santiago airport described this transmission as coming in "loud and clear" but very fast; as he did not recognise the last word, he requested clarification and heard "STENDEC" repeated twice in succession before contact with the aircraft was lost.[19][20] This word has not been definitively explained and has given rise to much speculation—including suggestions (made before the wreckage was finally discovered) that the aircraft and those aboard could have been the victims of a UFO encounter.[11]
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Oct 7, 2013 00:42
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If there's one thing aside from horrible murders and serial killers that this thread needs its the crippling existential fear caused by the scale of the Universe . This is an incredibly scary wikipedia page (or beautiful, if you like). The fact that the observable universe is different from the universe in that: "It simply indicates that it is possible in principle for light or other signals from the object to reach an observer on Earth." Goes so far beyond "man's humble place in the universe" that it moves into unknowable horrors of the beyond. It is brain meltingly difficult to get your mind around the sheer scale of the terms used in the article, but if you can grasp even the smallest bit, it's like being in a dark room, alone, cold and naked.
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Oct 7, 2013 13:26
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I find all that pretty comforting, honestly. It's a pretty human thing to assume we're somehow special or that life or the Universe must have a meaning but yeah guess what, on any scale beyond our own solar system we mean absolutely nothing and never will and the only meaning life in the Universe has is what you give it. In a few billion years where Earth once hung there will be nothing but dust. Even if we make out of here, in a few googols or whatever, the last remaining black hole will evaporate and hey ho, an eternity of nothingness. Have a nice day 
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Oct 7, 2013 13:47
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Stare-Out posted:I find all that pretty comforting, honestly. It's a pretty human thing to assume we're somehow special or that life or the Universe must have a meaning but yeah guess what, on any scale beyond our own solar system we mean absolutely nothing and never will and the only meaning life in the Universe has is what you give it. In a few billion years where Earth once hung there will be nothing but dust. Even if we make out of here, in a few googols or whatever, the last remaining black hole will evaporate and hey ho, an eternity of nothingness. Reminds me of The Last Question by Isaac Asimov - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question You can read the full version here - http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm
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Oct 7, 2013 13:55
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lenoon posted:If there's one thing aside from horrible murders and serial killers that this thread needs its the crippling existential fear caused by the scale of the Universe . Just think of Sagan: "We are a way for the Cosmos, to know itself." I've never really understood the fear aspect that some people have of our universe. It's an immense place, but that sense of scale triggers a sense of wonder in me, not fear. Joy that we as a species are able to grasp even the tiny sliver we can observe, not horror at the immensity of it. You can see it when you have a discussion about astronomy with someone completely ignorant on the subject. When you get to any kind of meaningful distances, like Sol to Alpha Proxima, oftentimes they'll look down, or try to change the subject, clearly uncomfortable with if.
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Oct 7, 2013 15:23
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Stare-Out posted:I find all that pretty comforting, honestly. It's a pretty human thing to assume we're somehow special or that life or the Universe must have a meaning but yeah guess what, on any scale beyond our own solar system we mean absolutely nothing and never will and the only meaning life in the Universe has is what you give it. In a few billion years where Earth once hung there will be nothing but dust. Even if we make out of here, in a few googols or whatever, the last remaining black hole will evaporate and hey ho, an eternity of nothingness. From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: quote:The Total Perspective Vortex
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Oct 7, 2013 15:33
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MrYenko posted:Just think of Sagan: "We are a way for the Cosmos, to know itself." MrYenko posted:You can see it when you have a discussion about astronomy with someone completely ignorant on the subject. When you get to any kind of meaningful distances, like Sol to Alpha Proxima, oftentimes they'll look down, or try to change the subject, clearly uncomfortable with if. Brother Jonathan posted:From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
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Oct 7, 2013 15:52
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Stare-Out posted:I should probably get around to reading that one of these days. Stop what you are doing, go to Amazon, iBooks, whatever, and get it. ...And pretend the rest of the series was never written.
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Oct 7, 2013 16:01
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Astronomical distances don't upset me much. But astronomical timelines?quote:100,000 years from now: Earth will likely have undergone a supervolcanic eruption large enough to erupt 400 km3 of magma. For reference, humans have been around for 200,000 years (depending on who you ask, and how you define modern humans.) The future of humanity looks pretty dicey. Let's jump a lot farther into Earth's future: quote:800 million years from now: Carbon dioxide levels fall to the point at which C4 photosynthesis is no longer possible. Multicellular life dies out. So things are not looking good for humanity. But what if we get off of the Earth, and find somewhere else to live? quote:3×10^43 years from now: Estimated time for all nucleons in the observable Universe to decay, if the proton half-life takes the largest possible value, 1041 years, assuming that the Big Bang was inflationary and that the same process that made baryons predominate over anti-baryons in the early Universe makes protons decay. By this time, if protons do decay, the Black Hole Era, in which black holes are the only remaining celestial objects, begins. Everything is temporary. The pyramids, Shakespeare, your favorite songs, fresh baked bread, religious traditions that stretch across thousands of years. One day, none of these will exist, and no one will be there to remember them. wafflesnsegways has a new favorite as of 16:33 on Oct 7, 2013 |
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Oct 7, 2013 16:30
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Assuming our current ideas about how all that will happen is accurate and we don't discover any breakthroughs in physics that relate to the whole entropy thing between now and 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000AD.
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Oct 7, 2013 16:55
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I'm more upset about the fact that I'll be dead for the vast majority of that time than anything else.
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Oct 7, 2013 16:59
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SheepNameKiller posted:I'm more upset about the fact that I'll be dead for the vast majority of that time than anything else.
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Oct 7, 2013 17:32
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MrYenko posted:Stop what you are doing, go to Amazon, iBooks, whatever, and get it. Really? I'd skip the unofficial sequel by Eoin Colfer, but I read the whole series multiple times growing up and I enjoy each one immensely.
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Oct 7, 2013 17:52
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Ezzer posted:Really? I'd skip the unofficial sequel by Eoin Colfer, but I read the whole series multiple times growing up and I enjoy each one immensely. They're ok in their own right, but don't measure up to the original.
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Oct 7, 2013 17:55
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Stare-Out posted:I wonder if it's some kind of egocentrism or not being uncomfortable with the distances themselves but with the fact that we live in Universe that's completely indifferent about our doings, opinions and ultimate fates. We couldn't be less the center of the Universe; we're not the center of the solar system, our solar system isn't the center of our galaxy, our galaxy is not the center of our local group, etc. We're not here for some purpose, we just are because we are. That bums people out for some reason. One of the central tenets of several religions is that humanity is special. God chose us. He made us on purpose and gives not only our entire race purpose but individual people purpose. You matter in the grand scheme of things. Imagine spending your whole life growing up and being told that you are a special thing created for a special reason and will affect reality itself in a special way. You were put here on purpose to leave a mark on existence that will endure forever. You, individually, are completely separate from all other creation because you are special. The universe will tie itself into knots just so you can do That Thing You Were Meant To Do. An omnipotent, immortal, all powerful being picked you personally out of every loving thing in the universe to do something special. Contrast that with "you're a clever ape that just happened to evolve on a ball of rock orbiting a kind of small-ish star that isn't really near anything of any consequence. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, many of which probably have like a dozen planets or so. The observable universe, as in, the part that we're pretty sure exists, is so unfathomably large. Oh by the way, even if you outlive the oldest person ever you'll still see such an infinitely small portion of all time that you might as well never have existed in the first place. Here's the Pale Blue Dot. That tiny little blue speck is Earth. You might never leave it." Some people just can't handle the idea that they're a smelly, hairy ape living a relatively inconsequential life, as far as reality is concerned. But yeah, I'm a follower of a more "you're part of the universe, just be" school of thought. I'm alive. I'm going to live a life for that, if for no other reason. Being alive is reason enough.
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Oct 7, 2013 18:36
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ToxicSlurpee posted:One of the central tenets of several religions is that humanity is special. God chose us. He made us on purpose and gives not only our entire race purpose but individual people purpose. You matter in the grand scheme of things. Imagine spending your whole life growing up and being told that you are a special thing created for a special reason and will affect reality itself in a special way. You were put here on purpose to leave a mark on existence that will endure forever. You, individually, are completely separate from all other creation because you are special. The universe will tie itself into knots just so you can do That Thing You Were Meant To Do. An omnipotent, immortal, all powerful being picked you personally out of every loving thing in the universe to do something special. We are apes, sure, but we're the most advanced (as we measure it) species we've ever known to have existed. And we have the capability to understand our existence and that of the entire Universe. That's pretty cool on its own. E: Rats, forgot completely that this is the Wikipedia thread. 
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Oct 7, 2013 18:51
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In the end it's really more frustrating that we can never see it all or even actually know how big the universe is, it could be infinite for all we know. I was actually kinda pissed the first time I read about the observable universe vs the actual universe. Though the fact there will be a point where every sky is devoid of stars is unnerving.
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Oct 7, 2013 22:04
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MrYenko posted:They're ok in their own right, but don't measure up to the original.
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Oct 7, 2013 22:10
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It's probably been posted before but I haven't seen it in a while, and it's spooky as hell: The Felix Moncla disappearance Basically, the Air Force detects an unidentified radar blip and dispatches a jet to check it out. They watch as the radar blip of the jet and the unidentified radar blip "merge" and assume that one flew under the other and would come out the other side momentarily. Then the blip just disappears. The plane was never found. Shame Boy has a new favorite as of 02:22 on Oct 8, 2013 |
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Oct 8, 2013 01:57
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:It's probably been posted before but I haven't seen it in a while, and it's spooky as hell: That reminds me of this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentich_Disappearance A young pilot reports seeing a thing that matches his speed and hovers over him. They fly about for a bit and eventually he says "that's not an aircraft." Eventually there was a recording of "metallic, scraping sounds" and then nothing. The guy and the plane were never found.
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Oct 8, 2013 03:18
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Strudel Man posted:I'd say they're all fine up to Life, the Universe, and Everything. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish is where it starts getting wobbly, and Mostly Harmless was just depressing. Really, the Radio show and BBC TV adaptation are the best iterations. To contribute, here's the wikipedia article on PayPal Cofounder Keith Rabois. It doesn't seem unnerving at first, but give it a couple looks. The gist is that Peter Thiel and Elon Musk liked Rabois because of a drunken meltdown where he shouted outside the home of a lecturer. He called said lecturer a "human being" and suggested that he "Die of AIDS", and this made Rabois seem more attractive to Thiel (and later Musk) because he wasn't 'Politically Correct'. Because obviously not calling people faggots is the biggest character flaw of all. Flash forward to the present day. Thiel founded Palantir, a security firm best known for drafting plans to smear Wikileaks on false grounds, and Musk is basically revered as a tech hero and prophet of the new age thanks to Tesla and his stumping for Trains and Space. It's troubling because of what it says about people who are nominally heroes. It's unnerving, I think, because it suggests that the tech wunderkind are actually regressive freaks.
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Oct 8, 2013 07:02
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Republican Vampire posted:It's unnerving, I think, because it suggests that the tech wunderkind are actually regressive freaks. I mean sure he's a terrible person but "nerds are terrible, terrible people" is hardly news. I mean look at Steve Jobs and his abandoned son.
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Oct 8, 2013 07:16
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:I mean sure he's a terrible person but "nerds are terrible, terrible people" is hardly news. I mean look at Steve Jobs and his abandoned son. The issue isn't so much that they're terrible people so much as that, like Steve Jobs, they're terrible people whose terribleness is largely forgotten. Musk especially, since he's today mostly known for Tesla, SpaceX and Hyperloop despite his association with creepy government types and outright creeps. Jobs is the same way, actually, in that the fact that he was a bad person is largely forgotten.
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Oct 8, 2013 07:22
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One of the other issues is that to get to a position as rich as Steve Jobs did you kind of have to exploit a few people along the way. He made some important contributions, sure, but compare what Jobs did with his role as a founder of Apple to what Wozniak did. Steve Jobs seemed more concerned with getting as rich as possible as fast as possible and hung on the company until he died. Steve Wozniak more or less quit working for Apple in the 80's then went off to invent things and be a teacher. Exactly the same situation with more or less the same opportunity. One said "gently caress yeah time to get rich" while the other said "gently caress yeah time to make the world less lovely."
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Oct 8, 2013 08:29
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ToxicSlurpee posted:One of the other issues is that to get to a position as rich as Steve Jobs did you kind of have to exploit a few people along the way. He made some important contributions, sure, but compare what Jobs did with his role as a founder of Apple to what Wozniak did. Steve Jobs seemed more concerned with getting as rich as possible as fast as possible and hung on the company until he died. Steve Wozniak more or less quit working for Apple in the 80's then went off to invent things and be a teacher. Not to get all YOSPOS in this bitch but this is absolutely false. Wozniak is your typical nerd who made good computers but wouldn't have advanced the field in any significant way. He was all about openness, modularity, user-serviceable machines, and so on. All the poo poo no one except nerds wants! Jobs had a vision for computers to leave offices and goon basements, and become friendly appliance-like machines that didn't require technical knowledge and let ordinary people get poo poo done. If you see how people use iPads nowadays there is no way you can say he didn't succeed. I've been coding for large companies for quite a while, and no sane person will claim that, for the tasks where it's applicable, an iPad with a dedicated app for internal use isn't vastly better than the old Access/ASP/WinForms/SAP/LifeRay-whatever frontends users had to deal with. As for home users, my parents used to boot the pc once a week, and used nothing but the links to stocks, news and banking sites I put on the desktop for them. Anything else was a mystery. I've given them both iPads and iPod Touches and they do loads more stuff now (my dad is way into Shazam) than they ever did, all without having to ask me for advice even once. Sure Jobs was a huge shithead in his personal life, there's no denying the facts. But Woz is a literally brain damaged lolbertarian nerd that donated to Ron Paul last election so pick your poison.
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Oct 8, 2013 11:11
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How about some "scary or unnerving" Wikipedia pages?
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Oct 8, 2013 11:48
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ToxicSlurpee posted:That reminds me of this. Creepy as that is, it loses some of the impact when you consider that radar never picked up the pilot where he supposedly was. He was also a big UFO enthusiast, so the most likely explanation is that he staged his disappearance. The Moncla story is a little more mysterious, even if the poor guy just crashed. Then you have Thomas Mantell, who died chasing a UFO...that may have been a weather balloon.
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Oct 9, 2013 02:43
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Unfortunately there's no wikipedia page for the story I am about to post, which I find kind of bizarre, because it definitely deserves a place there. I couldn't find one, at least. There's a Vanity Fair article on it (I have no clue whether VF is a good or bad thing) but everything else I've found have been links to news stories from the time. The story takes place in Manchester, England, in around 2002/03. The boys involved, who, by order of the judge in the eventual trial can never be identified, are known only as 'John' and 'Mark'. John is 14, Mark 16. quote:The stab wounds still pain him [John]. One in the chest—that was the light wound—and another in the abdomen, six inches deep, which pierced his kidney and liver and necessitated the removal of his gallbladder. It was from this injury that the teenager almost died on the operating table—twice, police tell me. Blood pooled inside the boy's body cavity, and this restricted the movement of his diaphragm, which stopped the functioning of his lungs. For days he lay on a respirator, treated with painkillers and antibiotics... The real story is in the depth of deception involved, which the article elaborates on more than I could here. It's an incredible story. Like something from Tales of the Unexpected.
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Oct 9, 2013 03:56
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stickyfngrdboy posted:Unfortunately there's no wikipedia page for the story I am about to post, which I find kind of bizarre, because it definitely deserves a place there. I couldn't find one, at least. That was a good read. It baffles me how Mark could be so gullible, he's got to have some kind of cognitive disability to have believed those lies to the point of committing murder. All very odd.
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Oct 9, 2013 19:59
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stickyfngrdboy posted:The real story is in the depth of deception involved, which the article elaborates on more than I could here. It's an incredible story. Like something from Tales of the Unexpected. Can't you just like... try to sum it up? It's five pages long and I don't have a clue what the gently caress from the bits you quoted. I'm sure there's more to it but all I can gather is a boy asked another boy to kill him and he tried to, which doesn't sound interesting at all.
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Oct 9, 2013 20:11
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Tibor posted:Can't you just like... try to sum it up? It's five pages long and I don't have a clue what the gently caress from the bits you quoted. I'm sure there's more to it but all I can gather is a boy asked another boy to kill him and he tried to, which doesn't sound interesting at all. The John kid, the one who was stabbed, invented a huge, elaborate network of false personalities, men and women, circulating around this gullible Mark kid, and eventually persuaded him to attempt John's murder: The article posted:‘Uwant me 2 … kill him … ?? that's wot ur askin me?" an incredulous Mark wrote the British agent Janet Dobinson on June 28, 2003. That was the day before the attempted murder. Edit: Later, when it came out that John was responsible. The article posted:As Clarke spoke about how John had manipulated the older boy, deploying a stream of imaginary virtual characters to lure Mark into carrying out his murder, he sneaked a look at Mark's face. The boy was, no mistaking it, aghast. The beautiful Rachel West, whom he had loved, wooed, and honestly mourned, was John—as was Kevin, who reveled in the bloody details of her gang rape and murder. Lyndsey East, who had briefly enchanted him and then disappeared without a word of good-bye, was John. Janet Dobinson, who had watched him masturbating on a Webcam, and who had promised him a lifetime of wealth and glamour, was John. The ice-cream vendors and shop assistants engaged in ceaseless surveillance of Mark: all John. The world he had known was John, written, produced, and directed by John. Reminds me of some of the creepier stuff from crazy internet people like the Final Fantasy House. HopperUK has a new favorite as of 20:38 on Oct 9, 2013 |
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Oct 9, 2013 20:23
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Tibor posted:Can't you just like... try to sum it up? It's five pages long and I don't have a clue what the gently caress from the bits you quoted. I'm sure there's more to it but all I can gather is a boy asked another boy to kill him and he tried to, which doesn't sound interesting at all. Hrm, five pages, too much sorry I'm not reading five pages. Maybe this documentary, which I went and looked for just now, just for you, is a better option (although it's an entire fifty minutes long! Fifty!)
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Oct 9, 2013 21:46
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LizzieBorden posted:Not so much scary and unnerving as sad. From waaaaaay back in the thread, but after having read this, I may never be happy again  It's terrible how many people drowned trying to save others and ended up as just an additional victim.
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Oct 9, 2013 21:52
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