What grinds my gears

Charlie Kirk is an American ultra-conservative political commentator and activist who, among other things, likes to go to American universities and colleges, and other similar places invaded by modern far-leftists, in order to engage in discussion with people who disagree with him. Sometimes he makes a really insightful and good point about exactly that, ie. discussion. Paraphrasing: What happens to married couples when they stop talking to each other, don't communicate, don't have discussions about their opinions, perspectives and differences? Similarly, what happens to a society when people stop having discussions and conversations with each other, particularly people who have differing opinions? That's right, schisms, division, animosity, and escalating radicalization, enmity and antagonism. Which, when taken to its logical extreme, ends up in a civil war and millions of deaths. And that's one of the biggest problems with the modern far-leftist cult: Like all extremi...

Some people have noticed a trend when it comes to art, particularly drawings and digital paintings, that's published and spread online: Art by left-wingers tends to be dominated by very poor, childish, badly drawn and hideous pieces of garbage, while art by more centrist and right-wing people tends to be dominated by quite decent quality. That's not to say that there are no far-leftists who draw extraordinarily good pictures, or that there are no right-wing artists that draw complete garbage. It's the proportion: Art by leftists appears to be overwhelmingly dominated by trash, while art by centrists and rightists have a significantly higher proportion of good-quality and excellent-quality work. The explanation for this can be summarized with two words: Toxic positivity. "Toxic positivity" is a neologism coined relatively recently to describe the kind of principle that most groups dominated by far-leftists operate under: Negativity and criticism is absolutely forbi...

All the way since at least 2016 and earlier, many companies were bamboozled into believing in the importance of having a (would eventually be called a few years later) "DEI department". Or if not an explicit separate department within the company, at least some people whose task was to make sure that the company adhered to the "DEI" principles. In other words, in practice, discrimination in hiring and promotions, and harassment of current employees. Hiring these people, often even ones whose sole and exclusive job in the company is to do "DEI" enforcement, became more and more commonplace up until about 2023. Since then, many of these people have been fired, and the number of such employees, in the United States at least, has been on the decline. Clearly many of these companies have started noticing that rather than helping anything, these "DEI" people are only making things worse. And the sooner that all companies realize it, and fire all of ...

The so-called "Jim Crow laws" were one of the darkest moments in the history of the United States (only surpassed by the era of slavery, until it was abolished). These were laws that were in place from the end of the 19th century to the mid-20th century, which established strict racial segregation in many states: Racially segregated schools, segregated institutions, segregated public transport, segregated universities and colleges, even segregated water fountains and benches. (For some reason the water fountains in particular became a symbol of the "Jim Crow laws".) These laws were abolished and relegated to the annals of dark history for good during the 1950's and particularly 1960's, with the civil rights movement and the passing of new laws that outright forbid racial segregation. A perfect example of actual genuine "social justice" and "progress" for the betterment of not just the United States but indirectly also the entire world, b...

Imagine that a representative for a company, who is white, were to stream or upload a video where he says: "We don't hire black people, we only hire white people, because we want to create a safe environment for our workers." Just imagine the shitstorm. The online mob would go absolutely crazy, major news outlets would be talking about it for weeks, that person and the entire company would be "cancelled" in every possible way, and quite possibly there would be terrorist attacks against the premises of that company and perhaps even its workers. However, reverse the races and... not a peep. No shitstorm, no outrage mob, no news media coverage, no threats, no "cancellation", no attacks... Nothing. And this is not just a hypothetical. This is actually exactly what happened recently: A representative of the game developer studio Cliffhanger Studios, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts, said exactly that on a stream, ie. that they don't hire any white peopl...

About 15 or so years ago (as of writing this) video game journalism had been almost completely invaded by far-leftist activists who, inspired by the way-too-successful anti-video-game campaigns by the likes of Anita Sarkeesian, joined the campaign and started writing article after article attacking, deriding and dehumanizing their very audience, ie. gamers. And what do you know, they got what they wanted: A massive counter-reaction from said audience, who didn't feel like being insulted, derided and dehumanized in that manner. Something that the journalists and other activists in the industry and elsewhere are still milking to its full potential to this day, as much as they can. These defamatory articles were oftentimes actually aimed at video game developer companies rather than anybody else. The most infamous such articles directly told those companies and the people running them things like "gamers don't need to be your audience." And the scary thing is that, at le...

One would have thought that Trump Derangement Syndrome couldn't get any worse than it was during Trump's first term in office. But, somehow, the American leftists have managed to surpass even their own antics from that time. Every single thing that Trump does is "fascism", no matter what it is. Even things that the Democratic Party itself promoted a decade ago is now "fascism" because Trump does it, such as cutting on wasteful governmental spending or reciprocal tariffs (both of which were endorsed by top Democrat figures a decade or two ago. Not that the American leftists know, or care even if they do.) The American leftists are so desperate to find "fascism" that they will declare everything "fascism". Rather obviously deporting people who have entered the country illegally is now "fascism". You know, because that was one of the key criticisms of the fascist regimes of the past, wasn't it? Isn't that one of the things ...

People have speculated for decades what the biggest dangers of ever-evolving artificial intelligence will be to the world and to society. I think the most pressing and realistic danger is that of "deep fakes": Images, audio and video footage that's so super-realistic that it's literally impossible to distinguish it from genuine material. At the moment of writing this it's still possible to detect deep fakes algorithmically and with "digital forensic" analysis, but this is becoming harder and harder by the month. The inevitable result is that we are very close to a point where it will be literally impossible to tell if something has been generated by an AI or whether it's genuine footage. And that's not even the worst aspect of it: The absolute worst aspect is how trivial it is to generate these deep fakes. In the past convincing fake footage (especially video) required a huge amount of work and experience, and often expensive equipment and softw...

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 ...

I have written about this very subject once before, but I just have to write about it again because I encounter this very idea being spouted again and again, even after all these years. The modern far left, in their incomprehensible and infinite hatred of "white people", love to engage in historical revisionism in order to smear, undermine, belittle and completely distort their past, and in fact the entire history of humanity. Many of these leftists are completely seriously claiming that "white people" invented slavery. That slavery did not exist in the world until "white people" invented it. According to them, the concept was completely unknown and non-existent among "non-white people" before "white people" introduced it to them. Any slavery committed by "non-white people" happened only and solely because they learned the practice from "white people." And even then, usually only to sell the slaves to "white peo...

I previously wrote a blog post about the Finnish police which, while there is a small fraction of them who are rotten to the core, in general are really professional, fair and genuinely friendly, actually caring about the citizens (rather than thinking that all citizens are potential enemies, like American cops are trained to do.) One notable and notorious example of where this difference can be seen is the fact that American cops, especially traffic cops, are very keen on "fishing" for crimes. Ask pretty much any American lawyer about it, and he will tell you that you should never answer a cop's questions during a traffic stop, no matter how innocent and "friendly" those questions are. Even if the cops is just asking something like "where are you driving?" your default answer should be "I do not answer questions." Pretty much any American lawyer will strongly recommend this. Is this just reactionary anti-police activism? No. Lawyers and oth...

Because modern far-leftism has successfully invaded pretty much all universities and all academia during the last 30-40 years, and consequently it has likewise succeeded in invading almost all of the scientific community, in many parts of the western world the ideology has made the scientific community to engage in extreme bigotry, discrimination, harassment and shunning of any scientists who do not conform to the ideology. Many of them are literally advocating for all "conservative" scientists to be kicked out of all scientific institutions and for them to be shunned, discriminated against, and not allowed to have any platform of publication for their work, no matter what that work may be (even it said work is as removed from politics as it can possibly be.) This got me thinking: Would it be good for science if this attitude was somehow reversed? In other words, if the scientific community started to do the same thing, but for the leftist activists within the community? Shou...

I have written a couple dozens of blog posts about the horrendous corruption, incompetence and cowardice of American police officers. But what about Finnish police? How do they compare? Are they the epitome of excellency in policing and law enforcement? Year after year Finland ranks on or near the top of least-corrupt government and law enforcement in the world. This fame is not undeserved, particularly when it comes to law enforcement and the police in particular. I would estimate that at least 99% of Finnish police officers are really professional, fair, competent, friendly and nice. They know the law, they know how to enforce the law with a high degree of professionalism, and they tend to be very sympathetic towards citizens. Unlike American cops, they don't consider it some kind of badge of honor how many arrests they make, and they aren't constantly fishing for crimes to pin on people. They tend to prefer just verbal warnings over fines and arrests, and they aren't con...

I have written about this before, but I thought I'll write about it again, because it's just getting so utterly tiresome. A bit prior to Trump's first presidency the American left just kept repeating over, and over, and over, non-stop, that Trump is "racist", and "a dictator", and a myriad of other accusations. They just kept repeating it over and over, trying to make it true via sheer repetition. There are myriads of videos out there from that time where someone asks a protestor when he has ever said anything racist, and the only answer that they could ever give is that he's constantly saying racist things. However, when pressed to give even one single example, they can't. One would think that if he is indeed constantly saying racist things, they could give plenty of examples. Or at least one example. Yet they just can't. The entire characterization of the American left that Trump is some kind of "dictator", or even that's he...

Recently one of the most known video game publications, Polygon, was sold to another company, and the majority of its staff was outright fired. This trend is by far not unique to that one publication. If you check most such websites (such as IGN, Kotaku, PC Gamer, etc) on some online trend tracking website, you'll see that their amount of traffic has been steadily decreasing over the last 10+ years, in most cases being a minuscule fraction of the traffic that they got in their heyday. There are two quite clear reasons why this is happening. Video game publications used to be very popular in the pre-internet 1980's and 1990's because they were essentially the only way that people got any information at all about upcoming video games. Before the internet there was extremely limited ways to get this information. Without these publications you could essentially just rely on some ads, which were rather obviously extremely unreliable sources of information about how good a new ...