Happy Monday!

I read Tedium’s article about tape hiss and then fell down a rabbit hole, trying to find the noise that played at the beginning of many cassette tapes. It’s called XDR (or test tone, sometimes) and of course I should have checked Metafilter first. 

Umberto Eco talked about what Casablanca, Hamlet, and The Count of Monte Cristo have in common – they’re wildly imperfect, which, oddly, makes them great. 

Why are haunted houses creepy? Aeon explores the spooky hallways in our minds.