Month: May 2018

Deep Sea Lab Techs

Well, either my google-fu has failed me or this is a red herring.

Is there some creepypasta out there about people working in a deep sea habitat going violently insane, in the same vein as the Russian Sleep Experiment? Something, something…Atlantis? Cthulhu? The Bends? I can only guess.
Or did someone think The Abyss movie is a documentary?

On the other hand, deep sea exploration is pretty scary. Physically there’s the risk of the bends, high-pressure nervous syndrome, or just explosive decompression. Not to mention just getting stuck on the bottom of the sea with no one coming to rescue you.

You don’t even have to go deep to get into trouble – I’ve always been creeped out by stories of lost scuba divers.

SEALAB I, II, and III were experimental underwater habitats developed by the United States Navy in the 1960s to prove the viability of saturation diving and humans living in isolation for extended periods of time. The knowledge gained from the SEALAB expeditions helped advance the science of deep sea diving and rescue, and contributed to the understanding of the psychological and physiological strains humans can endure. – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEALAB

The Cagots

The Cagots were a people of Western France/Northern Spain. Although they seem to have all but died out/been assimilated into their surrounding populations they were seen as a distinct social group as recently as the 20th Century.

The Cagots were an untouchable caste, prohibited from living, working or mixing freely with their non-Cagot neighbours. As such their lineage and culture has largely been erased. The anglophone internet has taken an interest in them in recent years, however and there are some articles about them.

Mereological Nihilism

Parts vs. Wholes

The point of view that objects that can be understood as being composed of parts (basically anything that’s not an indivisible particle) do not exist. It’s not an object, just a collection of parts grouped in a metaphysical relationship which we happen to perceive as a whole object.

I dunno; ask Plato.

Wikipedia

See also: DMT

Road to Roota

“The Federal Reserve Bank’s secret plot to destroy fiat money and return the United States to a Gold Standard.”

The Road to Roota is a US financial conspiracy theory originated and publicised by Bix Weir. I’ve not yet had chance to dig through his voluminous writings on his website but it seems like a great rabbit hole.

To quickly summarise (I think I’ve got this right):-

  • There is a conspiracy to bring down banking institutions and switch the US back to a commodities-based economy.
  • Markets are controlled by a computer system instigated by Alan Greenspan in the 1960s.
  • This conspiracy was hidden in plain sight by the Federal Reserve when they decided to publish it in a comic. No, really.
  • In 1981 The Federal Reserve released a bizzaro children’s comic, “Wishes and Rainbows” and accompanying teachers guide, “The Road to Roota”. It’s really weird. It’s supposed to help teach kids about economics, scarcity and supply and demand.

 

 

Anti-natalism

In life:-

  • Suffering is guaranteed – all lives involve suffering to some degree and avoiding suffering takes constant effort.
  • Pleasure is not guaranteed – again, securing the pleasure that makes our lives worth living takes effort and will not naturally come to us, in the same way suffering will.
  • It is desirable to minimise suffering.
  • Therefore, we should take the course of action that minimises suffering; we should stop creating life.

 

 

The Beacon of Hate

Shortwave radio hams in the USA discovered a beacon transmitting morse coded messages of bizzare angry word salad into the void. The apparently constant transmissions were noted as early as 1999 – I have no idea if they’re still being transmitted.

The Beacon of Hate, as it came to be known was a minor point of interest to the amateur radio enthusiasts who discovered it, and in turn those of us who learned about it via the internet. It is unknown who was behind the messages, who they were intended for, or where exactly they were being transmitted from.

The cryptic and miss-spelled messages were fixated on camels, porn, religion and tracks – whatever that means. Honestly, they’re quite hard to parse.

I’d love to know if there was ever any more information dug up on this mystery.

Plain of Jars

The Plain of Jars is a megalithic archaeological landscape in Laos. It consists of thousands of Iron Age stone jars scattered around the upland valleys and the lower foothills of the central plain of the Xiangkhoang Plateau. The giant jars are mostly arranged in clusters ranging in number from one to several hundred, the majority are made of carved sandstone.

The ancient human remains found in some of the jars suggest they were used in some kind of funerary process.

Spirit Science

Spirit Science was a series of animated videos created by a man named Jordan David Duchnycz. They were published to Newgrounds and covered popular new-age topics such as sacred geometry, chakras and energy woo, and DNA Activation. You know, the usual feel-good crystals and pseudoscience stuff.

Anyway, the videos have picked up an, ahem, “cult” following.