Jul 222020
 

A few years ago, the speech that was written for Nixon in the event that Apollo 11 failed surfaced. Obviously, Apollo 11 didn’t fail, so Nixon never had to deliver it. But thanks to the dubious miracle of deepfakes, now we can watch an episode from an alternate history. The audio is also computer generated (such as mentioned HERE), as opposed to read by an impersonator; somewhat counter-intuitively, the audio – at least to me – seems less convincing than the video, as there are numerous little discontinuities. The deep faked speech begins at about 4:35.

Insert now-expected warnings about how history, news and the justice system are about to be turned into muddled hot messes.

 

 Posted by at 2:14 pm
Jul 212020
 

Huh. Who coulda guessed…

Signaling virtuous victimhood as indicators of Dark Triad personalities.

Ok, E., Qian, Y., Strejcek, B., & Aquino, K. (2020). Signaling virtuous victimhood as indicators of Dark Triad personalities. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication.

Abstract

We investigate the consequences and predictors of emitting signals of victimhood and virtue. In our first three studies, we show that the virtuous victim signal can facilitate nonreciprocal resource transfer from others to the signaler. Next, we develop and validate a victim signaling scale that we combine with an established measure of virtue signaling to operationalize the virtuous victim construct. We show that individuals with Dark Triad traits—Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy—more frequently signal virtuous victimhood, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic variables that are commonly associated with victimization in Western societies. In Study 5, we show that a specific dimension of Machiavellianism—amoral manipulation—and a form of narcissism that reflects a person’s belief in their superior prosociality predict more frequent virtuous victim signaling. Studies 3, 4, and 6 test our hypothesis that the frequency of emitting virtuous victim signal predicts a person’s willingness to engage in and endorse ethically questionable behaviors, such as lying to earn a bonus, intention to purchase counterfeit products and moral judgments of counterfeiters, and making exaggerated claims about being harmed in an organizational context.

 

 Posted by at 8:04 pm
Jul 212020
 

Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

 

 Posted by at 12:42 pm
Jul 202020
 

Some interesting home-made belt-fed firearms.

First, a British belt-fed lever action rifle. It’s real heavy but it seems to work quite well; I wonder if, with a fair amount of ergonomiccs work (replacing aluminum with plastic, say), there might be a market:

And then there’s this full-auto belt-fed 12 gauge shotgun. When it runs, it looks like more fun than a barrel of rabid monkeys dumped into the middle of an Antifa protest. But the problem… well, you’ll see:

One of the YouTube commenters got it right when he suggested that with the right ammo this would make a pretty fair  Warhammer 40K “Bolter.”

 

And because why not, here’s a not-home-made belt fed firearm. If it all still works right after the first run, I’d be a little surprised. The cartridges and links getting shot out the side do a number on the blanket, and the suppressor ends up doing a fair impression of a light saber.

 Posted by at 4:42 pm