Real-Life Weirdness

[Anaraxes]

Nice. Most of those seem like they'd be pretty terrifying even if they were cleaned up and in repair.

Is Halloween a thing in Russia or Ukraine? (I remember Jürgen Hubert once calling for a Halloween article for his Arcana Wiki, as he barely knew about it. I didn't think it was much of a tradition outside of ex-British nations and Japan.)

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Is Halloween a thing in Russia or Ukraine? (I remember Jürgen Hubert once calling for a Halloween article for his Arcana Wiki, as he barely knew about it. I didn't think it was much of a tradition outside of ex-British nations and Japan.)

Judging by my colleague dressed up all Morticia Addams-ish sitting a few yards to the left . . . it is here, though it isn't celebrated by everyone. The geek community overall seems to acknowledge the day, at the absolute minimum, and e-newspapers also seem to care about it about as much as about other minor (non-day-off) holidays.

I'm not so sure about Russia - I remember recently reading an article claiming that celebrating Halloween is rather anti-patriotic, because it's a piece of Western culture. But really, no idea how prevalent the recognition of the date is among their population.

Now, could you two please explain to me, what did I miss about my links that you seem to be thinking the pictures are somehow related to Halloween? Edit: Oh. The picture at the beginning. Eh, I just thought of it as the Silent Hill soundtrack.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

what did I miss about my links that you seem to be thinking the pictures are somehow related to Halloween?

Yes, the "Happy Halloween" intro to the Silent Hill video, as well as the posting date.

But I'm sure the playground is creepy year round :)

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

...
Now, could you two please explain to me, what did I miss about my links that you seem to be thinking the pictures are somehow related to Halloween? Edit: Oh. The picture at the beginning. Eh, I just thought of it as the Silent Hill soundtrack.

In the U.S., nearly anything remotely scary in October will be thought of as pertaining to Halloween.

[Anders]

The clownocalypse is night.

To a tweet about the surreal events in Southern France.

[William]

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/...st-velvet-worm

Scale that up to human-size and you get a very nice dungeon or wilderness predator: a blood-red worm of a thousand soft fat little legs, eyeless but using its antennae to sense air currents, climbing trees and walls (slowly, quietly) as it homes in on motion. It sprays its target with fast-drying adhesive to trap it, then uses its armor-piercing proboscis to inject digestive acid while its target is trapped, but fully conscious...

[Johnny1A.2]

Are you arachnophobic?

If so, you might want to avoid the Baltimore Wastewater Treatment Plant, because they seem to have a few spiders about:

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/4-acre-...ulfs-building/

[Johnny1A.2]

It looks like an ordinary grove of aspens, but it's really a single 80,000 years old tree...or is it actually one million years old?

Or maybe not, but it's interesting, anyway:

Pando

[sjard]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

It looks like an ordinary grove of aspens, but it's really a single 80,000 years old tree...or is it actually one million years old?

Or maybe not, but it's interesting, anyway:

Pando

Oh, that thing. It's pretty I'll say that, and a nice place to hike through. (it's practically in my back yard, about an hour and a bit south, I believe there's another nearby as well or potentially so anyway according to the wildlife department). It was big news here when they announced that it was just one organism a year or so ago.

[Daigoro]

The 19th Century Blueprint For A Massive Mind-Control Machine

The Air Loom worked, as its name suggests, by weaving "airs", or gases, into a "warp of magnetic fluid" which was then directed at its victim....
It was fuelled by combinations of "fetid effluvia", including "spermatic-animal-seminal rays", "putrid human breath", and "gaz from the anus of the horse", and its magnetic warp assailed Matthews' brain in a catalogue of forms known as "event-workings". These included "brain-saying" and "dream-working", by which thoughts were forced into his brain against his will, and a terrifying array of physical tortures from "knee nailing", "vital tearing" and "fibre ripping" to "apoplexy-working with the nutmeg grater" and the dreaded "lobster-cracking", where the air around his chest was constricted until he was unable to breathe.

This has to go in the next edition of Steamtech.