Filed under “Things That Maybe Aren’t That Great”, scientists have figured out how to induce schizophrenic symptoms in a computer.  In the test, they were able to overwhelm the computer with so much information that it developed crazy delusions, even claiming responsibility at one point for a terrorist bombing.  Using a neural network called DISCERN that is able to learn using natural language, they cranked up the rate of learning and instructed DISCERN to forget less, thus causing a mental breakdown.

Telling the computer to “forget less” was akin to flooding the system with dopamine, confounding its ability to discern relationships between words, sentences and events, according to a news release from UT.

“DISCERN began putting itself at the center of fantastical, delusional stories that incorporated elements from other stories it had been told to recall,” according to the news release. In one answer, it claimed responsibility for a terrorist bombing.

[Popsci via Geekologie]

This treehopper insect has developed an absolutely insane helmet that looks like an aggressive species of ant. There are more of these over at New Scientist.

[New Scientist via io9]

Florida is where the magic happens. Also, don’t turn your back on the wildlife.

[Jalopnik]

Hwang, a 66-years-old fisherman living in the near area, said he has never seen anything like this in his whole life and that the fish was tied with ropes when it was first found.
Many people have flocked to see this strange specimen since its discovery, although its rotting corpse already emits a foul smell.

[International Business Times]

Workers unearthed a skeleton from under the floor of an “sinister house” and the first thing that crossed their minds was “Chupacabra”. It apparently has a cat-like head and a rat-like tail and is terrifying the neighborhood.

“In the city of Pucón, Chile, workers were stopped dead in their tracks as they accidentally dug up a bizarre skeleton. The remains are said to be out of this world. Described as having a cat-like head and the tail of a rat, the remains were accompanied by other smaller skulls of local rodents.”

[La Cuarta via GhostTheory]

SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) is out of money and is no longer listening for alien signals.  Aliens, you win this round; you may commence snooping around the solar system and broadcasting at will.

In an April 22 letter to donors, SETI Institute CEO Tom Pierson said that last week the array was put into “hibernation,” safe but nonfunctioning, because of inadequate government support.

The timing couldn’t be worse, say SETI scientists. After millenniums of musings, this spring astronomers announced that 1,235 new possible planets had been observed by Kepler, a telescope on a space satellite. They predict that dozens of these planets will be Earth-sized — and some will be in the “habitable zone,” where the temperatures are just right for liquid water, a prerequisite of life as we know it.

[Mercury News]

This is from last year, so it is not new information or breaking news, but I am just hearing about this and it is fantastic. There are poisonous birds that are flying around on this planet. The Hooded Pitohui (Pitohui dichrous), Variable Pitohui (Pitohui kirhocephalus), and Brown Pitohiu (Pitohui ferrugineus) birds from New Guinea have a neurotoxin in their skin and feathers which causes numbness and tingling when handled. This neurotoxin is identical to the toxin from poison dart frogs and in high enough doses COULD KILL YOU.

[YouTube]
[Neatorama]
[Wikipedia]

“The community says that the monster changes shape while you are looking at it,” Warrant Officer Zandisile Nelani said.

He said one man had reported it changed from a man wearing a suit into a pig and then into a bat. The creature had been sighted on a number of occasions near a church and only appeared at night, Nelani said.

[i0l]

Thanks to Weird Things reader @BobCalli on Twitter for throwing this our way.

Apparently el Chupacabra looks even more like a coyote when still alive.  I love how the article describes them as the “legendary hairless creature.”

[ABC 15]

Archaeologists have recently unearthed a 2600-year-old human skull from a bog in the United Kingdom, and the skull contained what is believed to be one of the oldest known intact human brains. The skull belonged to a man in his thirties, who was hung,  and then had his head cut off and thrown in the bog.

“The brain-containing skull was found at Heslington, Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom. O’Connor and her team suspect the site served a ceremonial function that persisted from the Bronze Age through the early Roman period. Many pits at the site were marked with single stakes. The remains of the man were without a body, but the scientists also found the headless body of a red deer that had been deposited into a channel.”

The brain had no evidence of fungal or bacteria and they described it as being “odorless…with a resilient, tofu-like texture.” Delicious.

[Discovery News]

Fun new video from Russia showing a really small, mangled alien corpse.

“Russia, the republic of Buryatia, Kabanskiy district, an urban type Kamensk! The guys in the woods behind the village, obnaruzheli UFO!”

[GhostTheory]

At zero degrees elevation, this thing went 7 kilometers downrange – AFTER punching a hole in a steel plate.

[Gizmodo]

We really need to stop teaching robots how to fight us. Side note: it has a “berserk” mode.

[Geekologie]

Something bad is coming (probably). Whether it is plague, zombies, alien invasion, doomsday comets, magnetic pole shifts, or just the general end of the world, and Larry Hall has the perfect opportunity ready for those who want to be prepared. He shelled out $250,000 for a decommissioned Atlas F Missile Base in Kansas and is now selling condos starting at $900,000. Hey, that price includes five years worth of food too. You better hurry up, three of the seven floors are already taken.

“I thought, wow, I can transform it into an ultrasafe, energy-efficient fortress,” Hall says. Then he figured that other people might also sleep better 200 feet underground within epoxy-hardened concrete walls. And with a custom retrofit featuring GE Monogram stainless-steel appliances and Kohler fixtures, they could also eat (and flush) in style. So Hall announced a “condo suite package”—starting at $900,000—that includes a five-year food supply (think hydroponics and aquaculture) and “simulated view windows” with light levels calibrated to the time of day to keep you from going crazy.

[Wired]

Ollie Frisk and  four of his friends were skiing in the backcountry at the Härjedalen ski resort, located in northern Sweden, when Ollie unknowingly skied over a bear den which collapsed and sent him sprawling into the bear that was living there. The bear woke up and mauled Ollie, but he survived to tell the tale.

“But Ollie didn’t die. Instead, he says, he quit struggling as he accepted the inevitability of his fate, and when he did so, the bear simply stopped attacking him. A few moments later she wandered out of the lair, where Ollie’s friends made loud noises to scare her away. They then helped Frisk from the den, and back down the hill to safety.”

[Gadling]