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PopRocks
Jul 4, 2003

WTF am I reading?
One of my favorites from the last thread, the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shinrikyo

Specifically, their time spent in the Australian outback:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjawarn_station
The mysterious seismic event makes this page really unnerving.

The cult used their time in Western Australia to plan the 1995 sarin gas attack in Tokyo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_gas_attack

Something about this desolate area being so remote that nobody notices what a bunch of cultist terrorists are up to. The seismic event was probably a natural phenomenon like an asteroid that disintegrated before impact, but the nobody knows aspect just gets to me. Like, the fact that it's even possible that a cult could be working on WMDs is pretty bizarre to consider.

I read a pretty great article on how the cult thrived due to the culture in Japan following WW II, I wish I could remember who wrote it.

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PopRocks
Jul 4, 2003

WTF am I reading?

Rapman the Cook posted:

Why start a new thread just to post all the same things again?

Because it's "post your favorite" not "post your brand new, never before seen" and the old thread is long and the best can be curated and distilled in the first couple pages of this thread to get the ball rolling on articles that may not have been posted before.

Edit for content: The Voynich manuscript:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript
600 year old D&D guide, poorly translated book of plants, or document proving extra-terrestrial contact or hollow earth theory.

New developments:
http://www.beds.ac.uk/news/2014/february/600-year-old-mystery-manuscript-decoded-by-university-of-bedfordshire-professor

PopRocks has a new favorite as of 15:47 on May 6, 2014

PopRocks
Jul 4, 2003

WTF am I reading?

To be fair, none were cheating because they were incompetent, everyone passed the retests. They cheated because the only way to get promoted out of the nuclear base in the middle of nowhere was to consistently get 100% on the tests, which is something they have fixed: http://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/334501037/to-stop-cheating-nuclear-officers-ditch-the-grades

PopRocks
Jul 4, 2003

WTF am I reading?

serious norman posted:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Austin_yogurt_shop_murders

The 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders refers to the deaths of four teenage girls in a yogurt shop in Austin, Texas, on December 6, 1991, after which the shop was set aflame.

The initial investigation spanned nearly eight years. Two men initially confessed to the murders and were convicted, but they were released by 2009 due to lack of evidence. No new charges have been filed and local media coverage remains ongoing.

I've been thinking about posting this for a while, I find it more disturbing in a West Memphis 3 / Michael Morton way due to the miscarriage of justice. The two "men" who confessed were just teenage boys, and 2 more were implicated with them. They have since been released due to lack of evidence. One of the accused, Maurice Pierce, was later killed during a routine traffic stop because his previous experience led him to be highly paranoid of police:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2010-12-31/pierce-shooting-still-about-four-murders/

Here's a good retrospective on the case itself and what we know now:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2011-12-16/scene-of-the-crime/

I went to a party once where a guy claimed his old drug dealer bragged about committing the crime, but who knows if he was just trying to freak him out or seem tough? I told him he should go to the police, but I'm sure everyone who grew up here thinks they have a lead on that case. Regardless, police focusing on those boys and ignoring other leads has made the case basically unsolvable. The official line is still that the originally accused 4 teenagers committed the crime.

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