28 October 2024
[weird] The Assassin’s Teapot … A nice cup of tea or a murder? You decide. [via]
30 August 2023
[worms] ‘Oh my god’: live worm found in Australian woman’s brain in world-first discovery … Oh, Dear God, Tapeworms! ‘It was a fairly regular day on the ward for Canberra hospital infectious diseases physician Dr Sanjaya Senanayake, until a neurosurgeon colleague called him and said: “Oh my god, you wouldn’t believe what I just found in this lady’s brain – and it’s alive and wriggling.” The neurosurgeon, Dr Hari Priya Bandi, had pulled an 8cm-long parasitic roundworm from her patient…’
24 August 2022
[life] If You Transplant a Human Head, Does Its Consciousness Follow? … The engrossing real life story of a surgeon obsessed with head transplants. ‘One day, her friend, Cleveland neurologist Michael DeGeorgia, called her to his office. He quietly slid a battered shoebox toward her, inviting her to open it. Schillace obliged, half-worried it might contain a brain. She pulled out a notebook-perhaps from the ‘50s or ‘60s, she says-and started to leaf through it. “There’s all these strange little notes and stuff about mice and brains and brain slices, and these little flecks,” Schillace says. “I was like, ‘What … what are all these marks?’” Probably blood, DeGeorgia told her.’
8 March 2022
[weird] This Mysterious Computer Could Prove Time Travel Exists … The Dodleston Messages – a crazy story from the 1980s about a haunted, time-travelling BBC Micro!
10 January 2022
[web] Meet the man who accidentally started an assassin hiring website … Buying a internet domain name can have unexpected consequences. ‘Innes had received a message from a woman named Helen. She was stranded in Canada, had lost her passport, and wanted three family members in the UK murdered for screwing her out of her father’s inheritance. He didn’t respond. But she persisted: sending a second email, which included names, addresses and other corroborating information. Innes felt compelled to act…’
1 October 2021
[spy] ‘Havana syndrome”¯’ and the mystery of the microwaves … A beginners Guide to the mystery of Havana Syndrome. ‘One theory is that Havana involved a much more targeted method to carry out some kind of surveillance with higher-power, directed microwaves. One former UK intelligence official told the BBC that microwaves could be used to “illuminate” electronic devices to extract signals or identify and track them. Others speculate that a device (even perhaps an American one) might have been poorly engineered or malfunctioned and caused a physical reaction in some people. However, US officials tell the BBC no device has been identified or recovered.’
10 July 2020
[fun] This Meme Does Not Exist… Memes generated by A.I. almost work. Almost.
18 February 2020
[weird] The Russian Conspiracy Theory That Won’t Die … Interesting summary of the Dyatlov Pass incident. ‘The group began moving toward the slope of Peak 1079, known among the region’s indigenous people as “Dead Mountain.” A photograph showed the lead skiers disappearing into sheets of whipping snow as the weather worsened. Later that night, the nine experienced trekkers burst out of their tent half-dressed and fled to their deaths in a blizzard. Some of their corpses were found with broken bones; one was missing her tongue. For decades, few people beyond the group’s friends and family were aware of the event. It only became known to the wider public in 1990, when a retired official’s account ignited a curiosity that soon metastasized.’
23 December 2019
[mindblown] Reddit’s Best Mindblowing Facts of All Time … ‘There are more permutations of a standard deck of 52 cards than there are seconds since the Big Bang.’
14 November 2019
[tv] The 5th Young One: Pay No Attention to the Girl Behind the Sofa … She was hidden in plain sight all along – How could we have missed the 5th Young One? ‘And yes, the 2012 YouTube video shows it: a fifth housemate appearing at least once in every episode of the entire first series. She never moves, she never speaks, you never see her face, and her presence is never acknowledged by any of the other characters, but she’s there.’
23 September 2019
9 May 2019
[life] Mariko Aoki phenomenon … Do you have a urge to defecate after entering a bookshop? You are not alone! ‘Persons with a history of experiencing the Mariko Aoki phenomenon were described as having a “book bowel” tendency (Japanese: 書便派 sho’ben-ha) in Vol. 41 of Book Magazine.’
8 March 2019
[lists] The Best Unusual Articles on Wikipedia … List of amusing time-wasting articles on Wikipedia. Check out Jesus H. Christ, Calculator Spelling and the Cadaver Synod.
31 January 2019
[true crime] The Haunting of 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey … This creepy, true-crime story will put you off ever buying a house.
‘Two weeks after the letter arrived, Maria stopped by the house to look at some paint samples and check the mail. She recognized the thick black lettering on a card-shaped envelope and called the police. “Welcome again to your new home at 657 Boulevard,” The Watcher wrote. “The workers have been busy and I have been watching you unload carfuls of your personal belongings. The dumpster is a nice touch. Have they found what is in the walls yet? In time they will.”
This time, The Watcher had addressed Derek and Maria directly, misspelling their names as “Mr. and Mrs. Braddus.” Had The Watcher been close enough to hear one of the Broadduses’ contractors addressing them? The Watcher boasted of having learned a lot about the family in the preceding weeks, especially about their children. The letter identified the Broadduses’ three kids by birth order and by their nicknames – the ones Maria had been yelling. “I am pleased to know your names now and the name of the young blood you have brought to me,” it said.
20 November 2018
[mystery] The Mystery of the Havana Syndrome … a deep dive into the mysterious ailments effecting US Embassy staff in Cuba.
Before the victims arrived, in August, Smith convened a meeting of specialists at the university. Some of them were skeptical and wondered if the symptoms were psychosomatic. But their skepticism vanished when they saw the patients. “There was not one individual on the team who was not convinced that this was a real thing,” Smith said.
On August 20, 2017, Lee was flown to Philadelphia. For three days, she was subjected to a battery of tests, including MRI scans and exercises in which she stood on a moving platform and tried to keep her balance as it tilted. She fell nearly every time.
Lee and her doctors didn’t know what to call the mystery condition, so some of them referred to it as the Thing. (Smith said other names came later, including Immaculate Concussion and Havana Syndrome.) At the end of the testing, Lee told one of the specialists that she didn’t think she had the Thing. The specialist replied, “Oh, it’s definitely the Thing.”
25 July 2018
[religion] Why Is Google Translate Spitting Out Sinister Religious Prophecies? … Is Google Translate’s AI a Prophet? ‘In Somali, for instance, strings of the word “ag” translate into missives about the “sons of Gershon,” the “name of the LORD,” and references to Biblical terminology like “cubits” and Deuteronomy.’ [via jwz]
14 May 2018
[weird] Meeting Their Makers: The Strange Phenomenon of Fictional Characters Turning Up in Real Life … with stories from Alan Moore, William Gibson, Dave McKean and Doug Moench. ‘Authors have reported seeing their fictional creations act in this independent manner not only in their minds, but also ‘in real life’ – especially in the worlds of science fiction and comic books. Alan Moore himself has mentioned in an interview that he once saw one of his creations, the mage John Constantine (from the Hellblazer series), in a sandwich bar in London. “All of a sudden, up the stairs came John Constantine,” Moore revealed. “He looked exactly like John Constantine. He looked at me, stared me straight in the eyes, smiled, nodded almost conspiratorially, and then just walked off around the corner to the other part of the snack bar.” Moore contemplated whether he should go around the corner and double-check if it really was his own character that had walked into the bar, or whether he should just finish his sandwich and leave…’
3 May 2018
[funny] Go Look: Hilariously Disturbing Photos Of Bearded Men Looking Straight Up
25 April 2018
16 April 2018
[timemachinego] The Rise in Self-Proclaimed Time Travelers … fascinating overview of the epidemic of Time Travellers online. ‘With time travel, you can step outside the eternal stream of time. You can conquer physics. You can deal with loss and overcome death. In this way, these clickbait time-travel stories are a very American form of existentialism: We like to believe we can shape the future, and we need to know that everything will be okay.’
4 April 2018
26 March 2018
[weird] 16 Weird Things You Won’t Believe People Used To Believe, Believe Me … ‘Preformationism was another of Aristotle’s theories. He claimed that inside each human sperm was a tiny person, and inside that tiny person was more people-sperm (i.e, sperm = Russian dolls). What’s more, he believed this embryonic sperm was all that was needed to generate life: the woman was just the oven, and the resulting baby took 100% of its characteristics from the man. Cheers, Aristotle.’
12 January 2018
[weird] The human feet that routinely wash ashore in the Pacific Northwest, explained … ‘Why feet? It turns out that in water, human bodies naturally disarticulate, or come apart at the joints, so hands and feet often disconnect from corpses after soaking in the ocean for a while. “Feet easily disarticulate and when they are attached to a flotation device such as a running shoe, they are easily washed ashore,” wrote Gail Anderson, co-director of the Center for Forensic Research at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, in an email.’
10 January 2018
[tech] Wikipedia articles invented by a neural network … ‘Friends and existence. How to draw a coconut. Tree donkey. Category:People who can’t speed.’ [via jwz]
18 October 2017
[wikipedia] 19 Wikipedia Pages That’ll Send You Into A Week-Long Wikihole … a great time wasting list … List of common misconceptions: ‘This list is basically what it says on the tin: a bunch of facts that you think you know but aren’t really facts at all. For example, I was upset to learn that Thomas Crapper (the guy in the above photo) didn’t actually invent the flushing toilet. He just made them more popular. Also, less surprisingly, Einstein didn’t really fail maths, and when he heard this claim he said “before I was 15 I had mastered differential and integral calculus.” No need to brag, Albert.’
25 August 2017
[radio] The ghostly radio station that no one claims to run … profiling a ghostly Russian radio numbers station … ‘In the middle of a Russian swampland, not far from the city of St Petersburg, is a rectangular iron gate. Beyond its rusted bars is a collection of radio towers, abandoned buildings and power lines bordered by a dry-stone wall. This sinister location is the focus of a mystery which stretches back to the height of the Cold War. It is thought to be the headquarters of a radio station, “MDZhB”, that no-one has ever claimed to run. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the last three-and-a-half decades, it’s been broadcasting a dull, monotonous tone. Every few seconds it’s joined by a second sound, like some ghostly ship sounding its foghorn. Then the drone continues. Once or twice a week, a man or woman will read out some words in Russian, such as “dinghy” or “farming specialist”. And that’s it.’
8 May 2017
[weird] The weird poetry Google Translate writes when fed the same characters over and over … Don’t introduce A.I’s to the work of H.P. Lovecraft. It will end badly.
9 January 2017
[weird] The movie that doesn’t exist and the Redditors who think it does … Do you remember a movie from early Nineties called Shazaam? …
It wasn’t until last year that things took a dramatic turn.
On 11 August 2015, the popular gonzo news site VICE published a story about a conspiracy theory surrounding the children’s storybook characters the Berenstain Bears. The theory went like this: many people remember that the bears’ name was spelt “Berenstein” – with an “e” – but pictures and old copies proved it was always spelt with an “a”. The fact that so many people had the same false memory was seen as concrete proof of the supernatural.
“Berenstein” truthers believe in something called the “Mandela Effect”: a theory that a large group of people with the same false memory used to live in a parallel universe (the name comes from those who fervently believe that Nelson Mandela died while in prison). VICE’s article about the theory was shared widely, leading thousands of people to r/MandelaEffect, a subreddit for those with false memories to share their experiences.
21 January 2016
[life] Don’t freak out, but scientists think octopuses ‘might be aliens’ after DNA study … LOVECRAFT WAS RIGHT!! … ‘Octopus DNA is highly rearranged – like cards shuffled and reshuffled in a pack – containing numerous so-called “jumping genes” that can leap around the genome. “The octopus appears to be utterly different from all other animals, even other molluscs, with its eight prehensile arms, its large brain and its clever problem-solving abilities,” said US researcher Dr Clifton Ragsdale, from the University of Chicago. ‘
18 January 2016
[magic] Seems Legit: We Talked to a Witch Who Casts Viruses Out of Computers With Magic … ‘There’s all different kinds of energies, including entities that may or may not be noticeable to human beings. You might want to call them ghosts or angels or spirits or demons. Think of demons as entities-they eat, they absorb energy, and they want to be fed. Computers are a vast store of electromagnetic energy, as well as messages. Sometimes when a demon is in a computer system, it’s just like a roach in a kitchen. It just eats and stays out of the way. But some demons are working for someone’s who’s trying to hurt you, and those are the really hard ones.’
3 November 2015
[funny] Evil Genius Seeks Minions … ‘No Weirdos.’
21 August 2015
[bible] The 14 Weirdest Moments In The Bible … ‘You call me bald, I will have you killed by a bear: Some children mock a bald man. He curses them, and two female bears come out of the woods, killing 42 of them. He continues on his journey. No one seems to think this is disproportionate.’
26 July 2015
[odd] An Abandoned Indonesian Church Shaped Like a Massive Clucking Chicken … ‘Towering above the trees in a densely forested area of Indonesia lies a giant chicken. The gigantic structure has the body, tail, and head of the bird, even holding open its beak in what appears to be mid-squawk. Although the very old bird is quickly decaying, Gereja Ayam (as the locals call it) attracts hundreds of photographers and travelers to its location in Magelang, Central Java each year who are looking to explore the bird’s bizarre interior.’
17 June 2015
[weird] Has the Internet solved the mystery of this 40-year-old radio signal? … what’s the story behind Russian radio signal UVB-76? … ‘It’s easy to dismiss the signal as pre-recorded, or a looping tone. But what listeners quickly realized was that UVB-76 is not a recording. The buzzer noise is generated manually. The reason for hearing telephone conversations and banging noises in the background of the signal is that a speaker creating the buzzer is constantly placed next to the microphone, giving the world an eerie insight into whatever cavern the signal originates from.’
23 May 2015
[music] CIA Allegedly Behind 1980s Club Hit About Sleeping Dominatrix … a true story that reads like something James Ellroy might write if he wrote about the Seventies … ‘In 1978, the CIA was caught up in a BDSM Cold War affair. A potential Soviet asset had fallen for a professional dominatrix who made decent money peeing on entertainment lawyers. Also in play was Mary Tyler Moore’s landscaper, merely because he was sweet on the dominatrix and her record collection. The most actionable intelligence from these black leather ops would not be obtained by the Agency, but by the landscaper himself, Stuart Argabright. Under the alias Dominatrix, Argabright recorded “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight,” a New York club hit released in 1984…’ [via jzw]
10 May 2015
[weirdscience] Radio 4 in Four: Robin Ince explores hollow earth… go listen to this clip of Robin Ince on Hollow Earth theory (guest-starring Alan Moore).
12 February 2015
[tech] $10,000 Ethernet cable promises BONKERS MP3 audio experience … does anybody actually believe this audiophile nonsense? … ‘Pay close attention to how you plug in the “ultra-performance RJ45 connector made from silver”, because these are directional Ethernet cables (apparently in ignorance that in the digital sphere, frames travel both way on the cables).’
20 December 2014
[xmas] Find the hidden words in Santa’s Christmas word search … ‘HAIL SATAN / CONSUME FLESH’
10 December 2014
[tv] The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack … the true story of how a Pseudo-Max Headroom briefly hijacked Chicago TV broadcasting one evening in 1987 …
Then the camera cuts to Max from a slightly new angle, facing off screen and bent over. His mask dangles near the camera; his face is off screen and his buttocks are hanging out, front and center. “They’re coming to get me!” he screams. On the right side of the screen, a woman lazily spanks his ass with a flyswatter. “Come get me bitch!” he yells. The scream becomes a distorted, symphonic drone. And then just as quickly as his arrival, the signal cuts out, and Chicago was back to the eerie quiet of the regularly scheduled Dr. Who episode.
“As far as I can tell,” the Doctor observes at that very moment, “a massive electric shock. He must have died instantly.”
18 November 2014
[people] An Investigation into the Weirdest Ronald Reagan Photo You’ve Probably Never Seen … ‘I like trifling historical mysteries, and this obscure, bizarre photo of a famous man-this image utterly devoid of context-fits the bill. Who shot it? Where? What were the circumstances of the occasion? And who is the boy? I talked to Krassner first. I’d been looking for an excuse to interview him; how many people do you know that rode the bus with the Merry Pranksters, edited Lenny Bruce, and claims to have coined the term soft-core pornography?’
6 November 2014
[weird] The 6 Creepiest Unexplained Phone Calls [Page 1 | Page 2] … ‘An Anonymous Caller Predicted JFK’s Assassination: Sometime after 10 a.m. on a routine workday, an Oxnard, California, switchboard operator received a call from a whispering woman who dropped a bombshell: the president of the United States was going to die in 10 minutes. That time passed without incident, but the woman, still on the phone, doubled-down: “The president is going to die at 10:30.” She continued to babble away with cryptic statements like, “The Supreme Court. There’s going to be fire in all the windows,” and, “The government takes over everything, lock, stock, and barrel,” before the call finally disconnected at 10:25…’
4 November 2014
[gif] Chopping Purple Cabbage GIF … not a euphemism – chopping cabbage is more visually interesting than it sounds.
31 October 2014
[horror] 21 Wikipedia Pages That Will Make It Impossible For You To Sleep … a collection of unsettling articles for Halloween … ‘The Tamam Shud Case – On Dec. 1, 1948, a dead body was found on a beach in Adelaide, Australia. No one has been able to identity who the man was or how he died, and hidden inside his pants was a piece of paper that read “tamam shud,” which means “finished” in Persian. And that’s not even the craziest part.’
10 October 2014
[arcade] Polybius (video game) … fascinating urban myth about a arcade video game from the early 1980’s that mentally disturbed it’s players then disappeared … ‘Polybius is a theoretical arcade cabinet.’
4 September 2014
[loremipsum] Lorem Ipsum: Of Good & Evil, Google & China … the strange story of finding hidden messages in Google Translate with Lorem Ipsum filler text as input … ‘It all started a few months back when I received a note from Lance James, head of cyber intelligence at Deloitte. James pinged me to share something discovered by FireEye researcher Michael Shoukry and another researcher who wished to be identified only as “Kraeh3n.” They noticed a bizarre pattern in Google Translate: When one typed “lorem ipsum” into Google Translate, the default results (with the system auto-detecting Latin as the language) returned a single word: “China.” Capitalizing the first letter of each word changed the output to “NATO”…’
11 June 2014
[people] 27 People Who Have Better Job Titles Than You … ‘Lonnie Johnson – Professional Snuggler’
8 May 2014
[tech] Wat HiFi? … amusing collection of reviews for high-end HiFI equipment … ‘This [$600] USB cable is simply revelatory in its combination of ease and refinement on one hand, and resolution and transparency on the other. Although capable of resolving the finest detail, Diamond USB has a relaxed quality that fosters deep musical involvement.’
13 April 2014
[bullshit] New-Age Bullshit Generator … ‘Nothing is impossible. Self-actualization is the driver of aspiration. You and I are entities of the dreamscape.
Traveller, look within and enlighten yourself.’
23 February 2014
[weird] The 38 Most Unexplainable Images On The Web … WARNING: Contains traces of Garry Glitter. NSFW. Tasteless.
18 December 2013
[mystery] The Internet Mystery That Has The World Baffled … the fascinating story of a complex internet hunt / puzzle that nobody knows who created. ‘…a scavenger hunt that has led thousands of competitors across the web, down telephone lines, out to several physical locations around the globe, and into unchartered areas of the “darknet”. So far, the hunt has required a knowledge of number theory, philosophy and classical music. An interest in both cyberpunk literature and the Victorian occult has also come in handy as has an understanding of Mayan numerology. It has also featured a poem, a tuneless guitar ditty, a femme fatale called “Wind” who may, or may not, exist in real life, and a clue on a lamp post in Hawaii. Only one thing is certain: as it stands, no one is entirely sure what the challenge – known as Cicada 3301 – is all about or who is behind it.’