Apparently, the student had opened a window, when a roach broke into her room and started flying about (yes, roaches in Taiwan can fly).

Sleep deprivation was a widely-used torture method in interrogations in Soviet Russia (and other places I'm sure). You also start dreaming while awake if you're sleep-deprived for too long, so if anyone wants to know what it's like to be psychotic they can try something like this. Wonder how this guy dealt with all…

Quizzes like these make me nostalgic; I remember them from the early days of the internet. Usually the results were characters from your favorite show or series, of course. And naturally you already knew exactly which character was you and if you got the wrong result (God knows how, the questions were usually…

Why is it that I'm not bothered by Russians dangling from skyscrapers, but stuff like this gives me the heebie-jeebies?

That's the guy. I liked his LP for Dead Rising and I also noticed he shut up during the cutscenes. If I'm going to watch someone else play an entire game I'd rather they be amusing instead of completely silent.

Aside from bloodletting, early American medicine used to revolve around laxatives and purgatives (drugs that make you vomit) prescribed for everything under the sun. It conveniently explains how practices like homeopathy caught on — sure, it doesn't have any effect aside from placebo, but at least you're not spewing…

I thought that altering brainwave frequency during dreams might bring about lucidity; I was going to write a story about a gadget that does just this, in fact. In the story most of humanity rejects reality in favor of their dreams and it nearly leads to a global societal collapse, but perhaps that's a bit of a…

This was incredibly fun to read. C'mon — the Devil and his minions invade Moscow and mess with the townspeople, what's not to like?

I'm not a proficient lucid dreamer really (lucid dreams about three times a month on average) but yeah, I use it to summon naked people. Lucid dreams aren't exactly like VR though — reality is kind of bendy in dreams, even when you're lucid. Controlling dreams is pretty challenging (your subconscious likes to play…

This was awesome. I love this song but it's always driven me crazy — where is Major Tom headed, and why isn't he more worried about losing contact with Ground Control? Hopefully someone can reassure me it's really just about drugs so I can stop wondering.

Why does the 'Palace of Peace' have to look so much like the Ministry of Love?

Well, this article caught my attention. For the past few months I'd been sketching out a story idea that started with the invention of something like this. Specifically, a little helmet that used electromagnetic impulses to send users' brains directly into a dreaming state, letting them become lucid immediately and…

I know anecdotes are worthless, but two years after quitting all kinds of fast/fried food and commercial baked goods I find that I can't eat them anymore. Not only do they make me physically ill, but there's either gag-inducing amounts of sugar involved or there's a really strong preservative aftertaste that I just…

My first novel had shades of this; all the plot elements just seemed to fall into place. Later I realized that a decent portion of the plot had been borrowed from a schlocky B-movie I'd seen a decade ago, but oh well. Still turned out to be an adequately original story in the end.

Will definitely get this one; Annihilation was pretty great. I would compare the author (favorably) to J G Ballard moreso than Lovecraft; there's that sense of reality being slightly out of joint, to the point where you wonder if it's the characters who are going insane or if it's just you.

Making the death animation as traumatizing as possible would probably work in this regard. Say, having it trigger an interactive sequence where you can struggle uselessly against your fate for X number of minutes before succumbing. (I think there have been death animations fitting both descriptions in the Dead Space…

I would eat insects, though I'd prefer grubs/larva over anything with lots of chitin and prickly legs and such. But my main concern is whether or not they're safe — I know humans have historically eaten insects, but we've far more experience in consuming birds/mammals than bugs. Do we know if there's any health risks…

Have you ever shown a cat picture to a cat, or a photo of a dog to another dog? They ignore it. If it moves or smells or sounds like an animal they might show it a passing interest, but humans rely much more heavily on their sense of sight compared to most animals. (Even animals with sharp vision tend to be more…

Realizing their own lack of objectivity is one of the hardest things for people. (Other people, of course; I'm a robot and therefore perfectly rational at all times.)

First thing that came to mind.