Sep 16, 2014

MADE OF STONE

ACCORDING to Dante, the Styx is not just a river but a vast, deathly swamp filling the entire fifth circle of hell. Perhaps the staff of New Scientist will see it when our time comes but, until then, Lake Natron in northern Tanzania does a pretty good job of illustrating Dante's vision.

Unless you are an alkaline tilapia (Alcolapia alcalica) – an extremophile fish adapted to the harsh conditions – it is not the best place to live. Temperatures in the lake can reach 60 °C, and its alkalinity is between pH 9 and pH 10.5.

The lake takes its name from natron, a naturally occurring compound made mainly of sodium carbonate, with a bit of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) thrown in. Here, this has come from volcanic ash, accumulated from the Great Rift valley. Animals that become immersed in the water die and are calcified.


Source/more.

Sep 15, 2014

CRAPPYPASTA: DARK BEES

legands talk for bees about in past that didd horrble things and had the curses but nobody belived silly story and laugh at them but they would be wrong and pay for it with death

it was at the farm and sam the farmer went to his bee area of te farm and fed them some honey “good bees” he said but then one got in his anti bee suit and stung him “ouch stop that hurt” he sout and then the bee went inside his skin and made a bee hive in his body and it hurted but he thought it was just cold “i go dinner and bed” said sam

sam ate the dinner and went to bed and heard buzzing “what is buzzing” he say and then he felt sore and his chest burst and bees came out and the bees started eating him and he was sekelton and then the bees open a window and go to city.

at the city people where shoping and having fun and ice cream and it was ghood day “ouch daddy a bee stung me” said a girl and the dad patted her on head “it alright bees just want friends” said the dad but it was too late because she was a bee hive and die and bees eated her and her dad and there was screaming and death as city was bee city now

a man kiss his wife “let me love you forever” said the wife and then she turn into bees and cover the man in bees and he die

on a hill there was a blue man in gas mask and it was leader of the bees and creator of creepypasteas mrcreepypasta “remember live good life or bees find you to” he laugh

the police got to city nexct day but there was no sign of bees and they decise that everyone just had car accdants and forgot what happen but there was scary legands about bees but nobody belive them which was foolash of them but people never laern.

the end
 

by megamangx


Quite possibly my favorite CrappyPasta...ever.

Source.

Sep 14, 2014

REVIEW: WORLD OF TROUBLE (BOOK 3 OF THE LAST POLICEMAN TRILOGY)

 
"...But on the core fact there is one consensus: the asteroid 2011GV1, known as Maia, measuring six and a half kilometers in diameter and traveling at a speed of between thirty-five thousand and forty thousand miles per hour, will make landfall in Indonesia at an angle from horizontal of nineteen degrees. This will happen on October 3. A week from Wednesday, around lunchtime."
Detective Henry Palace returns in the third and final entry in the Last Policeman trilogy, Ben H. Winters' "existential detective series" about one man and the last few cases that fall in his lap leading to the end of days, caused by an asteroid that is on an unavoidable destructive path with the earth. In the first novel, The Last Policeman, Palace's case was his job; in the second, Countdown City, his case was a favor; and in this, the final hurrah for Henry Palace and all the other earthlings, his case is his most personal yet: his sister, Nico, has gone missing, and he's got to find her, desperate to make amends before Maia the asteroid comes along and puts an end to everything. Believing Nico to be in the company of other like-minded folks who are convinced they have found a way destroy the asteroid before it can touch down, Palace, along with his unlikely team of companions - Cortez, a man who'd attempted to kill him with a staple gun in the previous book, and Palace's rescue dog, Houdini - travel the ruined landscapes of America in an effort to find his missing sister. But, as is usually the case, there's more than just a missing sibling. There's two bloody trails leading in and out of an abandoned Ohio police station. There's the barely-alive young girl with the slit throat Palace found in the woods. And there's the missing scientist who may or may not be with this end-of-the-world group of would-be heroes insistent they know how to avert the apocalypse.

World of Trouble is a solid finale for a solid series. The world has continued to regress since the last book, and different factions of people are acting in different ways. Some have taken to the streets in groups of vigilantes to take over stores filled with potential rations; others hide in their homes behind drawn shades, clutching shotguns and nervously peering out windows. Two particular well-meaning teens let all the animals out of the zoo to prevent them from starving to death in captivity, and one of them being immediately cornered by a tiger. These details and the many more flesh out this pre-apocalyptic world and turn it into something both surreal but also entirely believable.

For his swan song, Winters has embraced an almost-The Road type device for his tale, which puts Hank Palace on a rather innocuous task (finding a sledgehammer to bust through a suspicious and newly-installed hatch in a police station parking garage floor), but during which Palace, instead, crosses paths with several different characters, all of whom are reacting to the end of times in very different ways. In prior Last Policeman novels, the characters with whom Palace interacted were all part of the larger mystery - the "point" of the respective novel. But now, instead, there is less of a focus on unraveling a mystery than there is immersing in the drama of this environment. The mystery is still front, center, and fully accounted for, but Winters is instead weaving human experience in and out of Palace's mystery. Each character provides a missing piece of the puzzle, sure, but they're also there to provide something else: humanity.

World of Trouble's ending is bittersweet, and obviously while I won't reveal if the world comes to an end, or if Nico's band of anti-asteroid misfits manage to come through and destroy the means in which the world will end, there's still an ending here:

Hank Palace has solved his last mystery.

Sep 12, 2014

SCREAMED MY NAME

I moonlight as a paramedic and working EMS you will see all kinds of creepy and fucked up things. Every shift I go in I do so with the knowledge that there is a good chance my face will be the last or first thing a person sees as they leave or enter this world. The one that sends a chill up my spine though happened last year while I was still doing clinicals. We received a call to a nursing home for a unresponsive 87-year-old woman. When we picked her up it was obvious she was not long for this world. She coded three times on us before we got her to the ER. What freaked me out though was when she became responsive briefly during transport. I was starting an IV and she just sprang to life, grabbed my arm with a strength unholy for a frail old woman, looked me square in the eye and in a raspy, guttural way quietly screamed my name. The look in her eyes was unlike anything I had seen before or since. It felt like she was staring straight into my soul.

What is so disturbing about that is that during no point had I introduced myself to her as she was unresponsive. Also being a dumb student I had forgotten my ID badge that day as well. I had never worked her before as a patient, nor meet her that I can recall in any capacity. Could be she mistook me for somebody else by the same name but it sure seemed meant for me. She died less than an hour after admission. To this day I still remember everything about that call like it just happened and it makes my blood run cold to remember her face and the way she called to me. Sometimes I close my eyes and still see that face.

Story source.

Sep 11, 2014

CABIN FEVER


"It's a slang term for the claustrophobic reaction that can occur when people are shut in together over long periods of time. The feeling of claustrophobia is externalized as dislike for the people you happen to be shut in with. In extreme cases it can result in hallucinations and violence—murder […]."