What grinds my gears

And now for something completely different. I played quite a lot of chess in my youth, but then I got bored of it. About ten years ago I started playing again, and found my love of the game rekindled. In the era of the modern internet this is very convenient, as you can very easily play against people from all over the world. However, while that's nice and all, at least for me personally nothing beats playing the game in real life, with a real board, and real people in the same room, with whom to have casual conversation and socialize. It's so much more enjoyable and relaxing when the other person is not just a completely faceless person on the other side of the world, and when you can actually handle the pieces and look at a real board, and there's no time pressure so you can think and play at your own leisure, while having an amicable conversation with your opponent and possibly other people in the room. Hmm... Did I say "relaxing" because "there's no t

"Nothing new under the Sun" and "history repeats itself" are common sayings, and they turn out to quite often be true. No wonder they have become sayings. The history of medicine has always had huge episodes of malpractice, beliefs based on unfounded assumptions, and horrendous de facto human experiments done on patients, for pretty much as long as medicine has existed. The history of medicine is stock full of beliefs and practices, some of which were quirky and hilarious, other absolutely horrendous stuff of nightmare. One of the more recent examples of this was the practice of lobotomies, which happened for the most part of the 20th century. Considering how horrendous of an operation a lobotomy is, it may be a bit hard to imagine that, instead of it being considered an extremely drastic procedure to be used only as the utmost last resort when nothing else has worked, during the latter half of the 20th century some doctors prescribed them like candy, to "cure

Sometimes you might encounter some youtube video or other piece of media where some people try to Do The Right Thing for at least one person, by going to a homeless person and giving him a new chance at life. As in not just giving him some pocket money, but going all the way out: Give him a place to stay, find him a job, give him some serious starting money, all so that he can get back on his feet, get his life in order and start a new one where he can sustain himself and stop being poor and homeless. These projects try to show altruism: Helping someone who has fallen to hard times to get back on his feet and get a new chance. Help a homeless person get a home and a job, a stable income, and thus a higher quality of life and a brighter prospect for the future. Helping some poor guy, as a random act of kindness. While these sound really good and commendable, the problem is that they seldom work out in the end, and usually end up failing catastrophically. The main problem with this idea

It is quite well known that Disney, as with the rest of the majority of the American entertainment industry (especially Hollywood) has become "woke" since quite many years ago. One of the defining core characteristics of modern "woke culture" is the absolute hatred and disdain of not only white people in general, but consequently anything that can be considered traditionally European, or part of European culture (which is often misnamed as "white culture", even though there's no such thing .) One way in which far-leftist "woke" people show their disdain for European history and culture is to take this history, or parts of this culture such as traditional fables and stories, and distort them in a way that changes or erases white people from them. So-called "race-swapping" is the most common way to do this: Take such a story, and change traditionally white people from it to non-white people. Quite often this is deliberately provocativ

I have written several blog posts about " inconvenient perpetrators of hate crimes ", where extremely egregious and unambiguously racism-motivated violent physical attacks are being committed almost daily in the United States against minorities, such as Mexicans, Asians and Jewish people, yet these hardly make headline news because the perpetrators of these attacks are inconvenient for the narrative (meaning that they, usually, are either black, or if they are white they are members of antifa.) Sometimes the situation is inconvenient from the opposite direction. In other words, rather than the perpetrators being inconvenient, it's the victims of racist discrimination that are inconvenient, and thus the far-leftist cult and mainstream media don't really know how to approach the situation. The most prominent example of this is the situation that Americans of Asian descent have experienced for like a couple of decades now, especially when it comes to college and univers

As of writing this, the government of the United Kingdom is spending over 5 million British pounds in order to house foreign nationals who have entered the country illegally. They are being housed in luxury hotels (four-star, in some cases even five-star hotels), expensive motels, immigration centers built for this precise purpose and, in the most egregious cases, even in luxury passenger liner ships. "5 million pounds? You mean in total, or every year?" you might ask. No, not every year. Not even every month. Every single day. That's 150 million pounds a month, 1.8 billion pounds per year. The UK government is quite literally treating illegal immigrants much better than the homeless, and those living under the poverty line. These are people who have entered the country illegally, breaking the laws of the country and trespassing its sovereign borders without permission. And the government is housing these criminals in luxury hotels instead of expelling them or putting th

Some time ago I watched a youtube video about someone infiltrating an American ultraconservative cult, using hidden cameras. At one point one of the cult members tells about knowing someone whose grandparents had been slaves, but who actually liked that position. It then shows the video creator making an expression to the camera (I think it was filmed afterwards) of the sort of "WTF dude, that's so messed up! That's such a racist thing to say!" I don't know if that story is true or not, but I find it curious that in the modern (western) world there are certain things that you just can't say, even if they were true and factual. Such as, for example, claiming that some American slaves actually liked their position and didn't find it wrong nor oppressive. This kind of claim just irks people in the wrong way, and usually causes a very strong reaction, that of outrage and disgust. I don't know if this type of taboo has a name, but at least at this point I a

There's an oft-repeated factoid that in the United States billionaires don't pay any taxes. This is yet again one of those lies that the left is trying to make true by sheer repetition. The fact is that billionaires do pay taxes even in the United States. The funny thing is that when you challenge the claim, what follows is a series of moving-the-goalposts. "Billionaires don't pay any taxes." "Where do you get that impression? Billionaires do very much pay taxes." "But they pay less taxes than poor people." "No, they actually pay more. A lot more." "But they pay a smaller percentage of their income." I have witnessed and participated in this kind of moving-the-goalposts discussion several times. First it's "they don't pay taxes", when challenged it becomes "they pay less taxes", and when that's also challenged it becomes "their tax percentage is lower". Billionaires do indeed pay hu

Recently a university professor made a tweet that has gone somewhat viral. He's astonished and appalled that university freshmen don't seem to have even the most basic knowledge of the most notorious events of history, such as when the Holocaust happened, or even when the two world wars happened. But, more notably, he's appalled at the complete lack of curiosity shown by the students. When he told one of these students that she was wrong about when the Holocaust and the two wars happened, she did not get curious about when they did happen, what the correct answer is; she did not ask for the correct answer. Apparently she was completely uninterested. (I can imagine that she either shrugged and said "ok", or just looked at the professor with a blank dozed-off stare that showed absolutely no interest in the subject. I get some "valley girl" vibes from this brief description.) I doubt that the professor made this tweet based on just one single student. I wou

The independence day of the United States saw, once again, far-leftists giving sanctimonious speeches about how the United States is one of the worst places in the world and that there's nothing to celebrate about it, and how it's oppressive and racist and so on and so forth, all the same jazz, like a broken record. It's ironic that they really love to burn the flag of the country (or, rather hilariously in the case of the screenshot, attempting to, because the flag wouldn't catch fire as it was made of fireproof material) with zero awareness of the fact that their right to do so without any consequences is actually rare in the world, and a privilege that only few countries provide. In most countries disrespecting the flag is illegal and could result in sanctions. In the United States freedom of expression is so sacrosanct that you can burn all the flags you want and nothing happens to you, which is rare in the world. Their very right to protest the country by burning i

One of the notable characteristics of the modern far left is that whenever something happens that they can milk for their political agenda, they will come up with a narrative that supports their agenda, and then they will start repeating that narrative as fact, over and over and over, for years and years, even if overwhelming solid evidence is presented that the narrative is completely false. This is especially popular among them when accusing someone of being "a right-wing extremist" and having committed some kind of hate crime or other type of crime against the far left in some manner. No matter how much solid evidence is brought forward that these accusations are completely false, that doesn't matter: Once the narrative has been established, they will keep repeating it as fact, no matter what. This is, of course, an agenda, and there's a clear purpose to this. Perhaps many/most of them aren't consciously thinking of this purpose and the fact that they are doing

Some time ago I had a radial head fracture (a fracture of the end of the radius bone that's closest to the elbow). The traumatologist said that in the past, and for the longest time, the arm would be completely immobilized for weeks for such a fracture, but nowadays that's not recommended because not only does it not speed up the recovery, but moreover it may cause a permanent decrease in the range of motion of the elbow. Instead, it's recommended to just leave the arm as it is and to periodically (and carefully) make motions with the arm in order to maintain the mobility of the elbow. Turns out that the practice of immobilizing the arm for several weeks for this particular type of fracture existed solely based on presumptions, not clinical trials and studies. And this had been going on for surprisingly long (decades and decades) without any corroboration. It was essentially medical tradition based on baseless presumptions. The scary thing is that this isn't, by far, th

It's hard to imagine that in this day and age there are still tribes of people in this world that have little to no contact with the rest of humanity , and live in either voluntary or enforced isolation. (Those tribes who live in voluntary isolation know that other people exist in other parts of the world, and might even know that they are much more technologically advanced, but have decided for one reason or another to remain as isolated as possible and not have any contact with the outside world. There are also some tribes who have little to no knowledge of the rest of the world and are still living isolated mainly because they are being protected by the countries where they reside in, which ban contact with those people.) One striking feature of these people is how extremely primitive they are. Pretty much without exception they live in huts made of straw and branches constructed directly on the ground (ie. they are floorless), and their most advanced weapons are primitive bows

American police officers are quite infamous all around the world for their lack of knowledge of the very laws they are enforcing, and their constant abuse of their power. There are literally thousands and thousands of videos out there of police officers demanding people's ID when they don't have a legal right to do so, making false arrests (for example for failure of showing ID when the person didn't need to legally do so), trespassing people from public places that they can't be legally trespassed from, as well as of course all forms of police brutality, physically abusing and torturing innocent people, and so on and so forth. American police officers very frequently charge people with completely made-up bullshit charges, if you so much as look at them in the wrong way. They are also very notorious for making up bullshit charges in order to justify their mistakes (in other words, when they eg. enter the wrong home, stop the wrong car, or assault the wrong person by mis

At the moment of writing this, there's yet another massive spree of rioting in France, done pretty much exclusively by immigrants. The rioters are burning down libraries, primary schools and cars, destroying shops, and rather obviously looting expensive stores. The riots have spread to other countries too, like Belgium. This is, of course, not an isolated case, just the latest one. There have been similar riots in the recent past, and there will be in the near future, at an ever increasing rate. France, among many other European countries, has imported literally millions of people from other countries, out of principle and with complete disregard to how economically and socially feasible it is, and with zero plans on how to integrate those people and manage such a massive influx of people who don't even want to integrate. The results of this can be seen all over Europe. Given that literally millions of people are still entering Europe every single year, and almost none of them