Horrors of the Night category archive

Why does this make me think of an H. P. Lovecraft story?

At Psychology Today Blogs, Katherine Ramsland tries to find some explanations for the spate of mass shootings ending in the suicide of the shooter. The article does not purport to explain why they happen, but does find similarities among them that seldom get noted in the news coverage.

A nugget (emphasis in the original):

We often don’t think much about the suicide angle in the aftermath of mass shootings, but a high percentage of these offenders had been depressed, angry, unstable, and unhappy with their lives. Yet instead of just taking themselves out, they decide to take others with them. What used to be an inward act has increasingly become outward.

I call this coercive suicide. We don’t yet know Aguilar’s motive, but typically suicidal mass murderers have the added need to punish someone, to make a public show of their death as a “lesson,” and/or to add their own notch on the infamy scale.

Follow the link to find out what a “wound collector” is.

Tony Norman comments on Geraldo’s “selfie.”

While Geraldo has always been comfortable going wherever the intersection of narcissism and new media will lead him, most of us have an instinctive revulsion about the prospect of sharing too much about ourselves. Some things — like the way we look like in the steam of the bathroom mirror — should be private.

More selfie-awareness at the link.

FB status update spooks the spooks, leading to a haunting.

Via Comically Vintage.

Not where I grew up, at least.

Now they have come back, as my irregular posts of my brother’s eagle pictures indicates–he lives directly across the Bay* from where we grew up.

And someone has been killing them, untentionally, it seems. The current theory is that they were collateral damage in an attempt to get foxes or coyotes (coyotes? there weren’t any of them, either).

Dick Destiny has a nice write up on his best guess as to what was used and on why that is his best guess.

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*When you grow up on the Eastern Shore, the world is divided into two parts. “The Shore” and “across the Bay.”

Did Nick Carter foresee modern agriculture?

Who destroyed the fractious factory farm?

Was Frank Perdue peeping around that corner?

Who conned Agra?

And what exactly is a “Monsanto,” anyway?

Find out now!

Listen to the Case of the Chemical Chickens (mp3) now!

Read more »

Britain should consider this a hostile act:

MTV is to launch a British version of its hit show Jersey Shore, which tells the story of eight outgoing teenagers growing up near the beach.

In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Tracy Rubin goes ga-ga because Visa’s, MasterCard’s, and Amazon’s websites got slow for a little while.

This is a serious overreaction, founded in ignorance of how computer networks actually function. Her “expert” is Richard Clarke, who (surprise, surprise) has a scary book to sell.

For a sane view of the cyberterrorism drumbeaters, read Dick Destiny.

Addendum, later that same week:

Dick Destiny, whose background in these matters is far stronger than mine, considers Ms. Rubin’s reasoning. The results are not pretty.

Here.