Why do people hate hearing recordings of their own voice? (And, listen to a recording of mine)

The New Neo Posted on by

And do they really hate them, actually?

Apparently a great many people do, and here are some theories as to why. The most common one given is that it’s a surprise; we hear our own voices differently than they sound to others.

But the article gives some other theories that have come up as a result of research:

Through their experiments, the late psychologists Phil Holzemann and Clyde Rousey concluded in 1966 that voice confrontation arises not only from a difference in expected frequency, but also a striking revelation that occurs upon the realisation of all that your voice conveys. Not only does it sound different than you expect; through what are called “extra-linguistic cues”, it reveals aspects of your personality that you can only fully perceive upon hearing it from a recording. These include aspects such as your anxiety level, indecision, sadness, anger, and so on.

Interesting. I’ve always felt that people’s voices reveal a tremendous amount about them. I’m extraordinarily sensitive to voice tones on the phone, for example (I don’t know whether most people share that trait or not, however). I usually can tell from the first “hello” whether persons are going to give me trouble or not, whether I will like them, whether they are lying down, whether they are in a hurry or otherwise reluctant to talk, and much more. When I’ve had a chance to learn whether I’m right or wrong, I’ve almost always learned I was right.

As for my own voice on recordings, I’ve heard it so often over the years that I don’t have much of a reaction to it at all. The first time I heard it, though, I was indeed surprised. I was a child, and I just didn’t recognize that voice as me although I knew it was. When I was a teenager I owned a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and I thought my voice sounded lazier and less incisive than I’d expected it to be.

Many of you old-timers on this blog are quite familiar with my voice from the old PJ Sanity Squad podcasts, which are no longer available online. However, after our PJ gig ended, we went over to Blog Talk Radio, and that site seems to have preserved at least some of our podcasts there. I did a search and clicked on this one from May of 2008. Ten years ago.

I do the intro that night, so you can hear quite a bit of my voice right at the beginning (after the scream; the shrieking was not me, it was our theme). I probably sound similar today. The clarity of the recording isn’t great, so there’s a bit of extra muddiness and murkiness. But that’s essentially what I sound like, although my actual voice is somewhat more clear.

I went there just to listen to my voice rather than the content. But I found myself fascinated by the podcast itself. We are talking about the fight among the Democrats between Hillary and Obama during the primaries, which were ongoing. The discussion turns out to be exceedingly relevant to today because we are actually talking about the Democrats’ attempts to appeal to what later became known as the rust-belt Trump voter. Towards the end of the podcast we also talk about similar movements in Europe.

Some of the predictions aren’t correct, of course. But I was surprised by how very much of it holds up. If you have some time, give a listen. I don’t talk much except for the intro and a couple of later statements—I’m the moderator—but the entire thing is very very interesting.

[ADDENDUM: If you want to hear an 11-minute interview with me (circa 2013), you can go here.]

One of Victor Davis Hanson’s best

The New Neo Posted on by

And that’s saying a lot.

You can find it here. Please read the whole thing.

Excerpt:

The billionaire Trump was able to connect with red- and purple-state voters in a way past Republican candidates had not—and not just in terms of his signature and unorthodox focus on issues such as trade, globalization, and illegal immigration. Trump, the person, mattered just as much. Throughout Trump’s invectives a number of messages were implicit.

One, Trump, by his manner of speaking, his temperament, and his vulgarity, was not embedded in the existing establishment or Washington power structure, and thus in theory he was not beholden to it in either the way he spoke or acted.

In other words, what the Republican establishment saw as a bug, the Trump voter saw as both a feature and a signal of his likelihood of being a straight-talking, no-nonsense, Washington-outsider figure.

Hanson the classics professor continues:

Two, like Homer’s Achilles, or Sam Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch, he was a disruptive force who could end a common threat (in the mythological fashion of “man-slaughtering” Hector or General Mapache’s federales) by the use of skill sets unavailable to, or felt to be unattractive by, his benefactors. Whether concerning the missiles of Kim Jong-un or the overreach of the federal government, Trump supporters wanted someone to try something different.

For me, the comparison this immediately brings to mind is the mythological and popular figure of the trickster:

Tricksters are archetypal characters who appear in the myths of many different cultures. Lewis Hyde describes the trickster as a “boundary-crosser”. The trickster crosses and often breaks both physical and societal rules. Tricksters “…violate principles of social and natural order, playfully disrupting normal life and then re-establishing it on a new basis.”

Often, the bending/breaking of rules takes the form of tricks or thievery. Tricksters can be cunning or foolish or both. The trickster openly questions and mocks authority. They are usually male characters, and are fond of breaking rules, boasting, and playing tricks on both humans and gods.

All cultures have tales of the trickster, a crafty creature who uses cunning to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief. In some Greek myths Hermes plays the trickster. He is the patron of thieves and the inventor of lying, a gift he passed on to Autolycus, who in turn passed it on to Odysseus. In Slavic folktales, the trickster and the culture hero are often combined…

In later folklore, the trickster/clown is incarnated as a clever, mischievous man or creature, who tries to survive the dangers and challenges of the world using trickery and deceit as a defense. He also is known for entertaining people as a clown does.

I will add something else. Long before Trump ever declared his candidacy, I had written one and only one post about him (one or two earlier ones had briefly mentioned his name, but they weren’t about him). Here’s an excerpt; it was written in April of 2011 (note the classical references here, too):

[“Gadfly” is] a word I’ve thought of often in connection with [Trump] and the Obama presidency, one that was originally used by Socrates to describe himself.

Here’s an explanation of what Socrates meant when he used the term [punctuation and spelling corrected]:

Socrates liken[ed] himself to a GADFLY (a horsefly). Just as a gadfly constantly agitates a horse, preventing it from becoming sluggish and going to sleep, so too Socrates, by moving through the city stirring up conversations in the marketplace, prevents the city from becoming sluggish and careless and intolerant.

It fits pretty well, although Trump’s most assuredly no Socrates. More and more, he also reminds me of a jester, although not one directly in the employ of the Obama court.

Why a jester? Well, he combs his hair funny. But mostly it’s because he fulfills this function of the traditional jester:

In Renaissance times, aristocratic households in Britain employed licensed fools or jesters, who sometimes dressed as other servants were dressed, but generally wore a motley (i.e. parti-coloured) coat, hood with ass’s (i.e. donkey) ears or a red-flannel coxcomb and bells. Regarded as pets or mascots, they served not simply to amuse but to criticise their master or mistress and their guests.

Jester/fools could say things no one else could say, ask questions no one else could ask, because they had little to lose and were given license to tweak. Trump has already voiced the unspeakable birther concerns, and now he gets into the very un-PC question of how Obama gained admittance to the two Ivies, Columbia and Harvard.

Interesting, no? That was Trump’s function then, as a popular and somewhat-outrageous outsider. Now he’s an insider of sorts—the president of the US, after all. But at least sometimes he still functions as an outsider to the usual norms of the presidency, as a gadfly, trickster, and jester. None of those terms are strictly pejorative, either; all have very positive aspects.

Back to Hanson:

Three, Trump’s own history and brand ensured he would not be able to partake fully of, or be accepted by, the restored society he sought to salvage, given his own distance from those he championed. Certainly, Trump’s own randy past, excessive appetites, and high-stakes financial dealings made him somewhat unappealing to those in York or Merced. But, ironically, his constituents thought he was nevertheless a champion who at a distance could be turned loose on their behalf against those they had grown to despise.

Very insightful, I think.

More thoughts on The Smirk: pride goeth

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ll leave Strzok alone after this, I promise (maybe). But I just thought I’d comment a bit more on The Smirk.

Have you noticed that just about everyone on the right has used that same word, smirk, to describe Strzok’s default facial expression during the hearings? It was almost the textbook definition of a smirk.

But why does he do it? Surely he knows he’s smirking? Surely he knows it’s offputting?

Well, maybe he knows and doesn’t care, because—as many people have suggested—he also knows he’ll be getting away with everything he did. There’s certainly some truth to that; I doubt Strzok will incur any further official punishment. But he’s already experienced demotion, as well as (I would imagine) trouble in his marriage, publication of his meant-to-be-very private emails, and a lot of ridicule and anger as a result.

For a proud man (which he clearly appears to be) that’s no fun. On some level it has to be embarrassing.

And that’s what I see as another reason—a big one—for his smirk: bravado, as well as defiance.

Strzok really had two choices of demeanor at the hearing. The first would have been contrition and admission of guilt. But Strzok appears firm in his feeling that he’s guilty of nothing (he doesn’t even seem contrite about the affair). Whatever he actually feels or doesn’t feel, even if he does feel a modicum of guilt, to display it to the world would cause further shame in someone who operates from an honor/shame point of view.

I think Strzok is an honor/shame kind of guy rather than a guilt kind of guy. Half the world thinks you’re despicable? Laugh at that half of the world. Wrap yourself in the flag. Say how despicable they are, not you. Put a sardonic, condescending little smile on your face to show your contempt for them and your superiority to them.

[NOTE: By the way, I think Trump should coin one of his trademark nicknames for Strzok. Maybe “Smirky Strzok”?]

Writing about (or not writing about) Trump’s NATO and British meetings

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a huge and important topic, but I haven’t written much about either so far. It’s not for lack of coverage; there’s plenty of that. It’s from weariness at the spin.

The MSM are doing the usual catastrophizing. Trump is a disaster. Everyone hates him. No one trusts him. He’s a crazy bull in a China shop.

Strangely enough, some of the people in question in what often involves closed-door meetings—the European and/or NATO leaders—seem to say things are going well and the meetings were “productive.” Do we believe them, or are they just issuing standard and meaningless diplomatic hype?

Much of the press has ignored the fact that previous presidents Bush and Obama both asked European allies to pay more for defense, too. But they asked so nicely. Trump sounded as though he meant it, which is apparently a no-no.

My opinion? The proof is in the pudding; the whole thing is in the negotiating, deal-making stage. Let’s see what actually happens.

One thing I do know is that all of Europe can’t possibly hate Trump. There’s a huge percentage of the population of many of the countries of Western Europe, and certainly of Britain and Germany, who are itching for their very own Trump-like leaders to win and to change policy in those countries, particularly policy towards immigration. They have made their wishes known at the ballot box, a threat to the leaders of both countries.

More Mueller-related indictments of Russians who will never be extradited

The New Neo Posted on by

The timing of the indictments, on the eve of Trump’s visit to Russia and meeting with Putin, is certainly interesting.

Eleven of the 12 Russian operatives are charged with either hacking into or “spearphishing” (sending emails to trick people into providing passwords) the computer networks of Democratic Party officials; spying on network activity and collecting information; and creating fictional personas to spread the information and conceal that the source was actually Russian officials with military intelligence agency GRU. The veiled proxies included an organization named DCLeaks (which claimed to be Americans) and Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be a single Romanian person. The hacking campaign dated back to March 2016, according to the indictment.

The 12th Russian operative (as well as one of the previous group of operatives) is charged with hacking into election-management systems on the state level, where that person is alleged to have stolen information about roughly 500,000 voters. Eleven of the 12 operatives are also charged with money laundering…and with aggravated identity theft, for using peoples’ names and passwords to commit fraud.

Rosenstein took great pains to explain that, thus far, there are no allegations that any Americans knew they were communicating with Russian intelligence officers as they went around arranging the release of the internal Democratic Party records. There’s also no allegation as yet that any attempts to meddle with the election systems affected the outcome of the presidential vote.

This sounds very similar to the previous indictments that went nowhere, except that these are not private individuals, they are with Russian military intelligence.

Russians also had attacked the Republican side of things, although they didn’t encounter much success and didn’t seem to try as hard.

The latest indictment can be found here. I wrote about the previous indictments here.

By the way, the activity in the present indictment began in March of 2016, before Trump won the nomination. Its main function, as in the activity described in the previous indictments, was apparently to sow discord in the American system.

More details of the Thai cave rescue

The New Neo Posted on by

Well worth reading. When the Times sticks to straight reporting, sometimes it does a very good job.

I learned details I hadn’t known before. For example:

10,000 people participated, including 2,000 soldiers, 200 divers and representatives from 100 government agencies…

More than 150 members of the Thai Navy SEALs, outfitted with improvised equipment sometimes held together with duct tape, helped create the escape route…Overseas military teams brought search-and-rescue equipment. The Americans provided logistics, while British divers navigated the most hazardous stretches…

Tham Luang Cave is a rare place where a person can become completely isolated. There is no GPS, no Wi-Fi, no cellphone service. The last known survey was conducted in the 1980s by a French caving society, but many of its deepest recesses remain unmapped. Spelunkers consider the cave one of the most challenging in the world…

The 30-strong American team, which was integral to the planning, recommended that each child be confined in a flexible plastic cocoon, called a Sked, which is marketed as a rescue stretcher and is a standard part of the Air Force team’s gear…

“They just had to lay there and be comfortable,” said Major Hodges, the leader of the American team…

At one point, the plastic bundles containing the teammates were placed on the hoses for the water pumps, which acted as an impromptu slide. Rope lines hoisted the soccer team aloft so they could swing past particularly craggy parts of the cave. In one leg of the escape, the cocoons were placed on floating stretchers, and Thai frogmen pushed them along.

Much much more at the link, including diagrams, drawings, and photos.

Now people lose their positions for quoting someone else’s use of the n-word

The New Neo Posted on by

Even if the person doesn’t approve of and doesn’t agree with the quote, but was using it to illustrate another point.

Also, apparently it’s now not okay to disapprovingly relate stories from the past about racial intolerance.

At least, not for John H. Schnatter, founder and former CEO (and now former chairman, a position he resigned on Wednesday) of Papa John’s Pizza, as he discovered recently.

Here’s how it went:

The call was arranged between Papa John’s executives and marketing agency Laundry Service. It was designed as a role-playing exercise for Schnatter in an effort to prevent future public-relations snafus [irony alert]. Schnatter caused an uproar in November 2017 when he waded into the debate over national anthem protests in the NFL and partly blamed the league for slowing sales at Papa John’s.

On the May call, Schnatter was asked how he would distance himself from racist groups online. He responded by downplaying the significance of his NFL statement. “Colonel Sanders called blacks n—–s,” Schnatter said, before complaining that Sanders never faced public backlash.

Schnatter also reflected on his early life in Indiana, where, he said, people used to drag African-Americans from trucks until they died. He apparently intended for the remarks to convey his antipathy to racism, but multiple individuals on the call found them to be offensive, a source familiar with the matter said.

The call occurred back in May, by the way. The resignation just happened.

I think maybe he was toast anyway, and the call was some sort of set-up.

More from the theater of the Strzok hearing

The New Neo Posted on by

Gohmert goes there:

Note the outrage of the Democrats. Terrible, terrible that their delicate sensibilities—and the extreme decorum of the House—has been offended! Gohmert only said what everyone was thinking, of course, and the visual of looking at Strzok’s smirking face while Gohmert said it was certainly instructive.

Smirk:

Noun

smirk (plural smirks)

An uneven, often crooked smile that is insolent, self-satisfied or scornful…

Verb

smirk (third-person singular simple present smirks, present participle smirking, simple past and past participle smirked)

To smile in a way that is affected, smug, insolent or contemptuous.

Synonyms

simper
shit-eating grin (vulgar)

All of the above.

ADDENDUM: From Ace:

Strzok declared that even asking him about his bias “is just another victory notch in Putin’s belt and another milestone in our enemies’ campaign to tear American apart.”

I wonder if he used that line when his wife asked him where he was last night. “Your questioning my whereabouts last night,” I imagine him thundering, “is exactly what Vladimir Putin wants, Traitor.”

Come to think of it, questioning anything that Peter Strzok has ever done in his life, or the actions of any other pre-Trump member of the federal government, is just another victory notch in Putin’s belt!”

ADDENDUM II:

Wow:

Are you watching the Strzok testimony?

The New Neo Posted on by

I watched some of it, and plan to watch some more but certainly far from all of it.

One reason I won’t watch much is that I already know what left and right will be doing. But another big reason, probably the biggest, is that I wouldn’t trust one thing Strzok says. He is a liar and a cheat, and of course his political bias has been clear for all to see. He will also be doing major ass-covering in his testimony, trying to convince us that his obvious bias (actually, hatred and contempt) isn’t really bias and that even if it is bias that bias didn’t affect his decisions about the very people he is biased against.

It’s simply unbelievable on the face of it. I don’t care what party such a person would be from or which direction the bias would go in, such a person is inherently untrustworthy. And even if he did sincerely think his bias hadn’t affected his decisions, he would probably be the last person to know whether it did or didn’t. That’s the way bias often works.

Watching Strzok testify, I have to say that he comes across as arrogant, angry, and duplicitous. Hey, maybe that reflects my own bias, but I don’t think so; it is plain in the expression on his face, just watching the visuals without the audio. His memory about what he wrote and why he wrote it comes and goes conveniently. His explanations are absurd for certain things he wrote, such as the idea that you can “smell” Trump voters—oh, it was just some random word he chose to indicate they seemed different than other voters. Believable? Not at all.

But what could Strzok say to defend himself that would be convincing? Nothing.

The American people—the portion who are paying attention, anyway—are like a jury here, although of course it’s not actually a trial. Juries pay a lot of attention not just to the words of a witness’s testimony but to what’s called his or her “demeanor.” Strzok’s demeanor is completely unconvincing and off-putting. And his words, likewise—at least, the ones I’ve heard and read. His pose of objectivity and outraged moral rectitude comes across as absurd, since we’ve read his private emails reeking with political bias and addressed to his partner in adultery.

Here’s a little sample of Strzok’s demeanor. It also illustrates why I’ll miss former prosecutor Trey Gowdy when he leaves Congress:

[NOTE: I’ve bumped this post up a bit.]