Extreme metal guitar skills linked to intrasexual competition, but not mating success

5 months ago
From the Journal of Least Surprising Research Results:

The findings highlight a potential distinction between mating motivation and actual mating success. While time spent playing chords was linked to a higher desire for casual sex, this did not necessarily translate into a higher number of sexual partners. [...]

"Heterosexual men who play extreme metal guitar do not seem to be doing it to attract women, as has been suspected about musicians of other genres," DeLecce said. "Instead, it seems they are trying to impress and/or intimidate other heterosexual men with their skills." [...]

"I do want to make it clear that we did not purposely exclude women from the study," DeLecce added. "Unfortunately, our recruiting efforts yielded only one female extreme metal guitarist, which isn't enough to meaningfully represent this population."

Previously, previously, previously.

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The Eunuch Maker

5 months ago
Man claimed £18,500 disability benefits after willingly having leg amputated:

Marius Gustavson, 46, was the mastermind of a "lucrative" and "widespread" extreme body modifications enterprise in which procedures -- including the removal of genitals -- were filmed and streamed on his pay-per-view website. [...]

Two days before the procedure, Gustavson told Byrnes that he was cutting another person and that he could be a "sexy, kinky helper". Gustavson had previously boasted that he had "done over 26 guys in total, 18 totally done", which was a reference to the removal of both penis and testicles, the prosecutor said. [...]

The court heard that Byrnes, from Tottenham, north London, was filmed cutting off Gustavson's penis with a kitchen knife and saying: "Well that's one off the bucket list." [...]

Gustavson boasted about procedures he had carried out on other people and said he kept testicles he had removed in jars, to which Crimi-Appleby replied: "Awesome!" [...] Crimi-Appleby said he could not wait to see Gustavson "without a leg" and that he would look "amazing".

The court was shown a five-minute clip of the eight-hour freezing process that was uploaded on to the website, in which the pair were heard laughing out loud as Crimi-Appleby ladled ice into a bucket.

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The George Carlin AI Standup Is Worse Than You Can Imagine

5 months ago
The cursed hour-long special is the work of Dudesy, a podcast hosted by Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen and curated by an AI program with the same name.

The AI comedian, which is not funny and only sounds vaguely like Carlin, spends the hour riffing on various topics like Taylor Swift, U.S. gun culture -- and of course, hyping the supposedly revolutionary potential of AI technology.

Carlin's family did not give Dudesy permission to create the special, and his daughter, Kelly, publicly denounced it. "My dad spent a lifetime perfecting his craft from his very human life, brain and imagination. No machine will ever replace his genius," she wrote. "These AI generated products are clever attempts at trying to recreate a mind that will never exist again. Let's let the artist's work speak for itself. Humans are so afraid of the void that we can't let what has fallen into it stay there."

Given that this thing appears to be largely a commercial for "AI", it's a bit credulous to take them at their word that the script was "written" by software, and not heavily edited by human hands. [citation], as the kids say, [needed].

Still monstrous either way.


Update: Aaaaah, there it is....

George Carlin Estate Threatens Legal Action Over AI Special:

She is used to trying to chase down every false meme. "But this is different. This is just a whole other can of worms," she tells us. "I mean, ultimately, there is enough real George Carlin in the world that this little thing is not going to make a difference, but this is the tip of the spear. This is the barn door, you know, how many metaphors can I use for this? We must take a stand as artists, and those who take care of the legacies of artists."

Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen, the duo behind the Dudesy platform that created the new hour [...] act as if they're just two funny dudes at the mercy of an artificial intelligence they've collaborated with that somehow decided -- nine months after receiving a cease-and-desist order from Tom Brady's lawyers to take down their supposedly AI-generated comedy routine from the NFL great -- that it'd be a bright idea to regurgitate the recorded material of the late George Carlin to spit out a "new" hour of comedy Tuesday based on current events. They act as if their AI collaboration came up with the Carlin stunt all on its own, listening to the announcement with shocked looks on their faces.

Can't wait to find out if "MST3K cosplay" functions as a legal defense.


Update 2: Aaaaah, there it is....

"The YouTube video was completely written by Chad Kultgen." "Carlin estate lawyer Josh Schiller told the Times that the lawsuit would move forward."


Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

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Current Music: The Pixies -- Bone Machine ♬

THE BLOOP, unmasked

6 months ago
Was the Bloop from secret underwater military exercises, ship engines, fishing boat winches, giant squids, whales, or a some sea creature unknown to science?

As the years passed, PMEL researchers continued to deploy hydrophones ever closer to Antarctica in an ongoing effort to study the sounds of sea floor volcanoes and earthquakes. It was there, on Earth's lonely southernmost land mass, that they finally discovered the source of those thunderous rumbles from the deep in 2005. The Bloop was the sound of an icequake -- an iceberg cracking and breaking away from an Antarctic glacier! With global warming, more and more icequakes occur annually, breaking off glaciers, cracking and eventually melting into the ocean.

PMEL's Acoustics Program develops unique acoustics tools and technologies to acquire long-term data sets of the global ocean acoustics environment, and to identify and assess acoustic impacts from human activities and natural processes on the marine environment.

Wikipedia: List of unexplained sounds.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

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LCARS

6 months ago
Today I learned that there is an app that transforms your Android phone into a fully functional, completely inscrutable LCARS PADD. The attention to detail here is epic, and this is the only rational argument I have yet seen for willingly using Android.

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Current Music: Grind -- Spock's Brain ♬

Today in Torment Nexus News

6 months ago
Charles Stross: Tech Billionaires Need to Stop Trying to Make the Science Fiction They Grew Up on Real:

Gernsbackian SF mirrored Italian futurism's rejection of the past and celebration of speed, machinery, violence, youth and industry, and both were wide open to far-right thought. Gernsback's rival, John W. Campbell, Jr. (editor of Astounding Science Fiction from 1937 until 1971), promoted many now famous authors, including Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. But Campbell was also racist, sexist and a red-baiter. Nor was Campbell alone on the right wing of SF: for example, bestselling author Ayn Rand held that the only social system compatible with her philosophy of objectivism was laissez-faire capitalism. The appeal this holds for today's billionaires is obvious.

Perhaps SF's weirdest contribution to TESCREAL is Russian cosmism, the post-1917 stepchild of the mystical theological speculation of philosopher Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov. It's pervasive in science fiction -- seen in topics from space colonization to immortalism, superhumans, the singularity, mind uploading, and more.

Cosmism's contribution to the TESCREAL ideology is a secular quasi-religion with an implied destiny -- colonize Mars and then the galaxy, achieve immortality, prioritize the long-term interests of humanity -- that provides billionaires with an appealing justification for self-enrichment.

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Psychedelic Cryptography

7 months ago


How to secretly communicate with people on LSD:

If psychedelic states of consciousness provide some sort of information-processing advantage over sober states, this advantage may be possible to exploit for secret communication. Conversely, if there is any information-delivery method that only people on psychedelics can understand, it follows that psychedelic states have distinct information-processing advantages over sober states. [...]

Even more awesome is the idea that this technology can lead to the creation of a video-game that only people on psychedelics can understand and play. For a sober person the game would look like an incomprehensible bundle of dots, edges, colors, sounds, etc. But a person sufficiently zonked would perceive crystal-clear images and easy-to-infer objectives. Only a sufficient amount of LSD would allow you to score a single point in this game.

Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness Contest:

The three pieces that win [...] do require a substantial level of tracers, so only members of the committee who had a high enough level of visual effects were able to see the encoded messages. Some of the members of the panel reported that once you saw the messages during the state you could then also see them sober as well by using the right attentional tricks. But at least two members of the panel who reported seeing the messages while on mushrooms or ayahuasca were unable to then see them sober after the fact no matter how much they tried.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

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Current Music: The Faint -- The Geeks Were Right ♬

Mike Johnson Admits He and His Son Monitor Each Other's Porn Intake

8 months ago
This is pretty kinky, man. It's like giving your partner the key to the "purity ring" locked around your genitals. Where by "partner" I mean "17 year old son".

"I'm proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate," Speaker of the House says of his "accountability partner".

The Louisiana representative talked about how he installed "accountability software" called Covenant Eyes on his devices in order to abstain from internet porn and other unsavory websites.

"It scans all the activity on your phone, or your devices, your laptop, what have you; we do all of it," Johnson told the panel about the app.

"It sends a report to your accountability partner. My accountability partner right now is Jack, my son. He's 17. So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week. If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice. I'm proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate."

Outside of the creepy Big Brother-ness of it all, Receipt Maven also aired concerns about whether Covenant Eyes -- which is still a working subscription-based service -- might "compromise" Johnson's devices, if he's still actively seeking accountability.

It's a rootkit. You can just say rootkit.

Update: From Violet's security roundup:

The app “takes screenshots (at least one per minute, in the case of Covenant Eyes) and eavesdrop[s] on web traffic,” and captures every single piece of web content, including hashtag searches (per, WIRED, this includes words like “gay” and LGBTQIA+ content).

We don’t know exactly how long Johnson has used Covenant Eyes (potentially since the early 2000’s). But it’s really neat to think about the fact that an election-denying insurrectionist has had spyware installed on his phone and/or desktop that is so thorough it screenshots every minute and then sends that data to the Covenant Eyes servers, and emails out the highlights. It also poses a national security problem, but that’s crystal-clear.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

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Current Music: Purity Ring -- Ungirthed ♬

Drone delivery: going just as great as self-driving cars.

8 months ago
Amazon's much-hyped drone project is dropping small objects on driveways. Customers are not sure what it delivers beyond minestrone.

"I know this looks like science fiction. It's not," said Mr. Bezos [in 2013]. Yet the venture as it currently exists is so underwhelming that Amazon can keep the drones in the air only by giving stuff away. Years of toil by top scientists and aviation specialists have yielded a program that flies Listerine Cool Mint Breath Strips or a can of Campbell's Chunky Minestrone With Italian Sausage -- but not both at once -- to customers as gifts. If this is science fiction, it's being played for laughs. [...]

Only one item can be delivered at a time. It can't weigh over five pounds. It can't be too big. It can't be something breakable, since the drone drops it from 12 feet. The drones can't fly when it is too hot or too windy or too rainy.

You need to be home to put out the landing target and to make sure that a porch pirate doesn't make off with your item or that it doesn't roll into the street (which happened once to Mr. Lord and Ms. Silverman). But your car can't be in the driveway. Letting the drone land in the backyard would avoid some of these problems, but not if there are trees.

On the bright side, it must be nice for drone operators to be able to find work that doesn't involve dropping bombs on weddings.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

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Fake gearshift busybox

8 months ago
The author of this article is giddy about being able to play a driving-simulator video game while driving.

To be clear: Literally nothing is happening in the car at this point other than the sound changing pitch. [...] I stopped and tried again. Clutch in first gear, I dropped the clutch just to see what would happen. The car lurched, and then it stalled. [...]

I ran the thing up to its rev limiter, and it abruptly stopped accelerating. When I clumsily downshifted, the car bucked when I came off the clutch. When I rev-matched, everything was more smooth. The car even modulated the brake regen and throttle sensitivity based on my chosen gear and simulated coasting in neutral.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

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Current Music: Craig Wedren & Anna Waronker -- Here for My Minivan / Sweaty When You Kill Them ♬