What grinds my gears

There's currently a huge amount of far-leftists in the United States who genuinely believe that members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are purposefully and knowingly "snatching innocent people off the streets" and deporting them, and thus the United States is a fascist country, a police state, with a dictator. I'm not even making that up: Millions of far-leftists in America genuinely believe that. But consider what that would mean if it were true: It would mean that the Trump administration has distributed some kind of secret executive order, memorandum or mandate to that agency (and probably other agencies such as the FBI) for them to do that. All the ICE agents know of this secret presidential mandate and are acting upon it, and every single one of them has successfully been keeping it completely secret under the wraps. No whistle-blowers, to leaks to the media, nothing. In other words, according to the American left there's a grand conspiracy goin...

A man is riding his motorcycle along a road, and the driver of some car going in the opposite direction waves at him from inside his car, and he waves back. A quite normal occurrence for most motorcyclists. Quite common when the driver is an avid motorcyclist himself, as saluting fellow motorcyclist is a common custom among that community. The motorcyclist keeps driving and arrives at his destination, and calmly parks on the side of the building, when the car stops behind it and some lunatic in plain clothes approaches him, pointing a gun at him and shouting to him to "get on the ground". A security camera on the wall of the building happens to film the entire incident He's being mugged! Perhaps a bit foolishly, but quite understandably because he is likely in a panic, the motorcyclist hesitates and then runs away for his life. He runs too fast for the attacker to follow. A bit later he gets caught... by the police. And gets arrested, and charged for "resisting arres...

Over the past several years women in many European countries, such as the UK, Germany and others, have at increasing levels found themselves being catcalled, followed, harassed and even inappropriately touched by men, complete strangers, on the streets. In many parts of these countries women literally cannot walk even a short distance from their homes to a grocery store without being harassed by random men. Most of these women are too scared and intimidated to say something, or make a report to the police. A few of them are brave enough to tell about it on social media, but still too intimidated to call the police. And in the extremely few cases that the police might be involved, they usually don't do anything about it. You can see a compilation by Paul Joseph Watson here . Notice how those men don't care if they are filmed while harassing women. Why? Because they know perfectly well that they are a protected class. They know that the police will not do anything to them (most l...

For some reason climate change denialism is extremely common among American conservatives and likeminded people elsewhere who listen to those conservatives. (It's a bit strange why this particular conspiracy theory is so prevalent among American conservatives, but I have my own theory about its origins here .) This widespread conspiracy theory has many negative consequences. The primary one is, of course, that when conservatives have the majority legislative power in the United States, they are likely to hinder the science and any actions done to remedy the problem. However, there are several more secondary problems that this causes. It is, after all, a bona fide conspiracy theory. I'm not just using that term in a derogatory and dismissive manner without it actually applying (as is so common nowadays), it really is a conspiracy theory. More particularly, it claims that tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of scientists, researchers, academics and scholars are in a ...

There's a video clip of a guy being interviewed in some kind of gaming or similar conference, and he's asked what trope he would like to see removed from video games, and he answers "heterosexuality". He also says that he would want to "see men kissing more." The clear implication is that he thinks that video games are full of "heterosexual" behavior, such as people of opposite sexes kissing. And once again they display believing in a complete falsehood. I'm genuinely trying to think of any video game that shows two people kissing. There certainly are, but it's so utterly rare that no example comes to mind, no matter how much I try to remember. (There is, of course, an entire subgenre of "dating sim", but I don't think he was referring to that, and was talking about all video games as a whole.) In fact, when I try to think of examples of "heterosexual behavior" in video games, it's also really, really rare. I...

One of the most misunderstood terms used in formal and informal logic is the concept of an "ad hominem" argument (or "attack"). Since "ad hominem" literally means "towards a person" or "against a person", many people believe that simply means "personal attack". After all, isn't that what it translates to? Which would mean that for example merely insulting someone is an "ad hominem"? And that's how many people are often incorrectly using that term. While "ad hominem attack" may technically speaking literally translate to "personal attack", the term is not used to mean just that, and has a much more specific meaning. An "ad hominem" (argument or "attack") refers to a fallacious argumentative tactic where it's not what someone is saying that's being criticized, but the person who is saying it. The intent is to erode the credibility of the person in order to make hi...

The youtuber who goes by the name "Professor Dave" (even though as far as I understand he isn't actually a real professor) has become quite infamous among youtube's political circles because of how bigoted of a far-leftist activist he is. (A "bigot" is one who is "obstinately attached to a belief, opinion or faction, and is utterly intolerant, prejudiced and antagonistic towards people presenting any differing opinions and creeds.") He isn't just (in)famous for being such a bigoted activist, but moreover because of his absolutely childish petty behavior. He just loves to go through the comment sections of his videos, and responses to his social media posts, and call people petty names in a very childish manner, not even trying to hide his patronizing belittling insulting attitude. (Several people have made screenshot compilations of these responses of his, which has made hundreds if not even thousands of. He just loves to insult people.) These ...