Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Researchers identify a new personality construct that describes the tendency to see oneself as a victim

A new personality construct has been defined that describes people who persistently see themselves as victims within interpersonal conflicts. The research was published in Personality and Individual Differences.

Study authors Rahav Gabay and team describe how the social world is satiated with interpersonal transgressions that are often unpleasant and seemingly unwarranted, such as being interrupted when speaking. While some people can easily brush off these moments of hurt, others tend to ruminate over them and persistently paint themselves as a victim. The authors present this feeling of being the victim as a novel personality construct that influences how people make sense of the world around them.

The researchers call it the Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood (TIV), which they define as “an ongoing feeling that the self is a victim, which is generalized across many kinds of relationships.”

Through a series of eight studies among Israeli adults, Gabay and associates sought to test the validity of the construct of TIV and explore the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional consequences of such a personality trait.

An initial three studies established the TIV as a consistent and stable trait that involves four dimensions: moral elitism, a lack of empathy, the need for recognition, and rumination. A follow-up study further found that this tendency for victimhood is linked to anxious attachment  — an attachment style characterized by feeling insecure in one’s relationships — suggesting that the personality trait may be rooted in early relationships with caregivers.

Keep reading

Biden Has No Legal Authority for an Actual National Mask Mandate

President-elect Joe Biden released his 100-day plan intended to combat the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) on Tuesday evening. That three-part proposal, however, features at least one unworkable premise: “Everyone wears a mask.”

Biden’s proposed national mask mandate was not elaborated on in the initial offering but the incoming administration made an effort to clarify that prong of their plan after several hours of nonstop and trenchant criticism online; from various shades of political opinion.

“My first 100 days is going to require–I’m going to ask for a masking plan–everyone for the first 100 days to wear a mask,” Biden explained in a video posted on Twitter late Wednesday morning.

The soon-to-be 46th president elaborated: “It will start with my signing an order on day one to require masks where I can under the law, like federal buildings, interstate travel on planes, trains, and buses.”

Overall, Biden’s proposal is a bit unclear, contains multiple caveats, and poses definite legal problems.

Keep reading

After 4 Years of Stonewalling Corrupt FBI Finally Admits They’re Holding Seth Rich’s Laptop

According to an email posted at Lawflog.com and sent to attorney Ty Clevenger, the attorney for the FBI now admits that the:

FBI has completed the initial search identifying approximately 50 cross-reference serials, with attachments totaling over 20,000 pages, in which Seth Rich is mentioned.  FBI has also located leads that indicate additional potential records that require further searching. . . . FBI is also currently working on getting the files from Seth Rich’s personal laptop into a format to be reviewed. As you can imagine, there are thousands of files of many types. The goal right now is to describe, generally, the types of files/personal information contained in this computer.

After more than four years of repeated denials from the FBI that they had searched their files and had no information on Seth Rich, we now know that was a blatant lie. It was David Hardy, a FBI Senior official, who put that denial in writing in September 2017. Hardy was the Section Chief of the Record/Information Dissemination Section (“RIDS”), Information Management Division (“IMD”),1 Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), in Winchester, Virginia. He stated under oath that the FBI had no records on Seth Rich:

(19) CRS Search and Results. In response to Plaintiff’s request dated September 1, 2017, RIDS conducted an index search of the CRS for responsive main and reference file records employing the UNI application of ACS. The FBI searched the subject’s name, “Seth Conrad Rich,” in order to identify files responsive to Plaintiff’s request and subject to the FOIA. The FBI’s searches included a three-way phonetic breakdown5 of the subject’s name. These searches located no main or reference records responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA request.(9) By letter executed on November 9, 2017, OIP advised Plaintiff it affirmed the FBI’s determination. OIP further advised Plaintiff that to the extent his request sought access to records that would either confirm or deny an individual’s placement on any government watch list, the FBI properly refused to confirm or deny the existence of any such records because their existence is protected from disclosure pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(E). . .

In his 2018 declaration, Mr. Hardy also testified under oath that the Metropolitan Police Department in D.C. was solely responsible for investigating Mr. Rich’s murder.

Now we learn that not only does the FBI have more than 20,000 pages relevant to the search term, “Seth Rich,” the FBI still has Seth Rich’s laptop computer.

Keep reading