Fantasy and Folklore

Lovecraftian games have been blowing up over the past few years. Dredge already has three DLCs, Darkest Dungeon did so well we got a sequel, and Still Wakes the Deep is sitting at almost 90% positive reviews on Steam. And the list keeps growing – smaller titles like Worshippers of Cthulhu and Do No Harm have also been getting plenty of love from players. This trend isn’t slowing down anytime soon, so we can expect even more in this year.

I think he runs Gentoo

lil' hat

Despite the fear they may inspire in humans, sharks have far more reason to fear us. Nearly one-third of sharks are threatened with extinction globally, mostly as a result of fishing.

Hab ich schon erwähnt, wie viel Freude ich mit "Schottensterben" von Gordon Tyrie habe? Besonders die Kapitel aus der Sicht einer Hochlandkuh! 🥰#lesen #KrimiLiebe@buchstodon

In conclusion, we have demonstrated that water droplets in a spray generate luminescence, which we call microlightning, when they split into smaller droplets in the absence of any external voltage.

While current evidence does not tell us exactly when language itself appeared, the genomic studies do allow a fairly accurate estimate of the time by which linguistic capacity must have been present in the modern human lineage. Based on the lower boundary of 135 thousand years ago for language, we propose that language may have triggered the widespread appearance of modern human behavior approximately 100 thousand years ago.

Science has already proven that sculptures from ancient Greece and Rome were often painted in warm colors, and now a Danish study has revealed that some were also perfumed.

The days are getting shorter and colder for Curiosity as we head into winter.

(lightyagami_) (2025)

Researchers have long known that many dinosaurs had bold patterns and bright, sometimes flashy feathers—far from the grayish, scaly monsters we often see in movies. Now, a new study of Chinese fossils published today in Science reveals the coloration of some of the early mammals that coexisted with dinosaurs. They were clad in dark brown or grayish fur—a trait that may have played a key role in their survival up to the present.

A few vets boldly state on the record that they are directly aware of alien life existing on Earth right now, and suggest that spacecrafts have been traveling here since the 1940s to spy on our technological capabilities.

Until recently, scientists thought that only animals of the genus Homo, which emerged around 2 million years ago, made stone tools. The discovery of cut-marked bones in Dikika, Ethiopia (in 2009) dated at 3.4 million years, and in 2011 of stone tools at Lomekwi, Kenya from 3.3 million years ago, changed scientists’ ideas of how much access Australopithecus had to meat.

If you were asked to describe the scent emanating from an ancient Egyptian mummy like you’d discuss a high-end perfume or the bouquet of a fine wine, you might mention fragrance notes of old linen, pine resin and citrus oils—with just a whiff of pest repellent.

Scientists have identified a promising new way to detect life on faraway planets, hinging on worlds that look nothing like Earth and gases rarely considered in the search for extraterrestrials.

Hey, did you know I wrote a book? 😁 It’s really cool!

OP: @[email protected]

Flying Lotus, visionary musician, producer, and filmmaker, has finally returned to the director’s chair after 2017’s Kuso for Ash, a bold and unrelenting sci-fi horror experience that plunges deep into the abyss of memory and paranoia. (...)

However, this enduring focus on serial killers comes at a cost. The victims of such crimes are frequently overshadowed, their names forgotten, while the killers become cultural icons. Despite his historical significance, Jack the Ripper was ultimately a brutal murderer. Yet the way we remember him today reflects a wider cultural obsession with serial killers that is both compelling and problematic.

Astronomers have discovered a collection of tiny galaxies located roughly 3 million light-years away that includes the smallest and faintest galaxy ever seen.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26676444

You can doubt just about anything. But there’s one thing you can know for sure: you are having thoughts right now.

The octopuses in the genus Hapalochlaena, known as blue-ringed octopuses, wield one of the deadliest substances known to science. The tetrodotoxin in their venom is such a potent paralytic that a single bite from the palm-size cephalopods can kill a person. But for the octopuses, it’s just a sedative—one that males use to subdue their much larger mates, researchers report this week in Current Biology.

Article from July 2010

By examining megalodon's vertebral column and comparing it to over 100 species of living and extinct sharks, they determined a more accurate proportion for the head, body, and tail.

Rats laugh, bees roll balls for fun, turtles dance when they anticipate feeding, and dogs wiggle their tails when they’re excited. Research into animal emotions and experience has been on the rise since the late 20th century, and scientists are beginning to use these findings to help understand an age-old question: Do nonhuman animals have consciousness?

Most human pathogens are of zoonotic origin. Many emerged during prehistory, coinciding with domestication providing more opportunities for spillover from original host species. However, we lack direct evidence linking past animal reservoirs and human infections.

As conversations around the role of museums in Indigenous cultural stewardship begin to shift in North America and beyond, much remains to be done to create a space for culturally informed curation and stewardship of animal remains. Animal remains are not usually treated with the same care as human remains or funerary objects subject to NAGPRA, but Indigenous concepts of personhood do not always make distinctions between human and animal.

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 5, Issue 2, from 1991.

Restoration Games, which specializes in revitalizing and updating long-dormant board games, has announced Battle Monsters, a new update to the 1990s board game Battle Masters. At GAMA Expo over the weekend, Restoration Games showed off an early version of the Kaiju figures for the game. Per ICv2, the game will feature Godzilla, Kong, King Ghidorah, and Mechagodzilla. We'll note that within the Monsterverse, Mechagodzilla is controlled using the remnants of King Ghidorah's head, so we're not sure how canon-accurate the game will be.

Much like Big Bad Wolf Studio, ACE Team is taking their turn on Lovecraft with The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu, a first-person 4 players co-op psychological horror title. The game is currently in development for launch later this year for PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and the Xbox Series.

When a species dies, so do its parasites

Updates to the Paranormal Database include glass smashing poltergeists, spooky pubs, and folkloristic places

Source (Furaffinity)

Set in the universe of Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones, the game lets players witness and influence the events preceding the Black Day.

Sometimes jobs fall apart halfway and never get off the ground, this one was particularly fun so hopefully the art will get used in some form in the future. In the meantime tumblr, it’s all yours!

Vampire: The Masquerade — Swansong developers Big Bad Wolf Studio are turning to Lovecraft for their new first-person title, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, the immersive storytelling experience will launch in 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam.

Cross-posted from ""Guiding some lost ducklings back to their mum" by Sarah Webb" by @[email protected] in [email protected]

Hello, Myth Lovers! Join us for tomorrow's theme: RETURNS. How are returns, such as a return from a journey, portrayed in myths? Write out your story and tag us using #MythologyMonday. If joining from #BlueSky: follow @ap.brid.gy so we can interact with your posts. See you soon!

Defining life is surprisingly challenging. While we intuitively recognize living organisms as having life, a precise definition remains elusive. Dictionaries offer various descriptions, such as the ability to grow, reproduce and respond to stimuli.

Art by Optipess: https://www.optipess.com/

I'm on SDF's Mastodon instance, specifically social.sdf.org for members, and I am have issues with custom emoji from other instances as shown in the picture.

Are subterranean lifeforms viable on Mars? A new interpretation of Martian seismic data by scientists Ikuo Katayama of Hiroshima University and Yuya Akamatsu of Research Institute for Marine Geodynamics suggests the presence of water below the surface of Mars. "If liquid water exists on Mars," Katayama says, "the presence of microbial activity" is possible.

katherinevillyard.com/bibliogr

"Our ballistic missile defense people were very concerned."

The 1998 discovery of a nearly intact Gravettian human burial in the Lapedo Valley (Leiria, Portugal) propelled the Lagar Velho rockshelter to worldwide fame.

Burial 10 is a unique Manteño (AD 650–1532) burial from Buen Suceso, Ecuador, dating between AD 771 and 953. This burial included the remains of a young female, pregnant at the time of death and buried with an elaborate array of goods, including anachronistic spondylus ornaments, green stones, and shell eye coverings. Perimortem trauma, including a cranial fracture and cutmarks on hand bones, perimortem removal of the hands and left leg, and other body manipulation suggest she was sacrificed, a rare event for coastal Ecuadorian peoples.

If you think you've spotted something peculiar in the skies, follow these expert-recommended steps from psychic chat provider Psychic World (www.psychicworld.com/) to ensure your report is taken seriously.

China Miéville's Perdido Street Station is easily one of the most critically acclaimed fantasy novels of the past several decades, as well as a seminal entry in the "weird fiction" subgenre. That makes the book a natural fit for The Folio Society's ever-growing library of deluxe hardcovers.

The Green Gardens core is particularly exciting for our science team because it contains serpentine minerals, which may have formed billions of years ago when water interacted with rocks before the Jezero crater impact. On Earth, serpentine-rich environments can support microbial communities, making this sample particularly important to understanding ancient Mars’ potential for life.

The Middle Neolithic in Britain (c. 3400–2800 cal BC) can be seen as a transitional period, with a shift from the construction of rectangular and linear monuments (such as long barrows, bank barrows and cursus monuments) to a circular archetype (

Source

Frogwares has just launched their Kickstarter campaign for The Sinking City 2, a Lovecraftian survival horror set in Arkham. "Set in an eerie, Lovecraftian reimagining of 1920s America, The Sinking City 2 is a narrative-driven, third-person survival horror game coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S in 2025."

Each stretching 550 feet long, the walls of the Octagon Earthworks form an enclosure large enough to contain four Roman Colosseums. It was built before the year 400 and points unmistakably to the position of the Moon at the peak of its 18.6-year cycle. This rare phenomenon is known as a major lunar standstill, and it’s happening right now. The current standstill began in the summer of 2024 and will last two years before embarking on another lengthy cycle.

A STATE-OF-THE-ART visitor centre is looking for a full-time “Nessie hunter” at the world-famous Loch Ness.

Here, we report the discovery of shatter cones in a complex, dominantly metasedimentary layer, the Antarctic Creek Member (ACM), in the centre of the East Pilbara Terrane, Western Australia, which provide unequivocal evidence for a hypervelocity meteorite impact.

In the Patagonia region of southern Chile, there are "living rocks."

Pixel art, animations, music, SFX and coding all done by Lollie

Source: https://socel.net/@heyheymomo/114104075853852539

Earth’s atmosphere, the veneer of gases that makes most life possible, has changed dramatically over time. Bubbles of ancient air trapped in polar ice cores provide reliable archives of the past 6 million years—but that’s less than 0.2% of Earth’s history. For the eons before that, which saw the origin and proliferation of life, researchers have had to infer the atmosphere’s composition from evidence of its chemical effects on metals and minerals preserved in ancient rocks.

All drawn by Christian Ward, they are:

Looking to build off of the buzz from the initial reveal back in November, Vertpaint Games has dropped a part documentary, part gameplay teaser for their upcoming Lovecraftian folk horror title Ritual Tides. The teaser gives viewers plenty of eye candy, looking to prove the claim by Vertpaint CEO James Macleod that Ritual Tides will be “the highest quality horror game of 2025.”

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/19104619

What a great review! goodreads.com/review/show/7075

Here we document an assemblage of bone tools shaped by knapping found within a single stratigraphic horizon at Olduvai Gorge dated to 1.5 Ma.

New fossil discovery of an early human ancestor reveals that it walked upright, just like humans

Although we might be unable to decode the poetics of a message, insights may still be revealed regarding the relationship between senders and receivers, offering a glimpse of the ‘puppeteers’. The society that produced, used and buried the Bolinas figurines around 400 BC in western El Salvador most likely maintained a relatively flat social hierarchy, while being able to act together to create monumental architecture.

This process of farming by the superb lyrebird operates at a spatial scale that is unprecedented in non-human vertebrates, extending across millions of ha in moist forest ecosystems.

I have uploaded .pdf copies of both editions of The Complete Norwegian Folktales and Legends of Asbjørnsen & Moe to ko-fi, where they are now available for purchase at less-than-half the cost of the Amazon paperback books.