What grinds my gears

The so-called " motte-and-bailey fallacy " is, essentially, an argumentative tactic that tries to defend an objectionable position by presenting an extremely simplistic more agreeable version of it whenever it's being criticized. In a way, it's a sort of "reverse straw-man" argument: In other words, it's like a normal "straw-man argument" except that instead of the argument being simplified in order to attack, discredit or mock it, it's simplified in the opposite direction in order to try to make it sound more acceptable and agreeable. One of the most perfect examples of this is feminism. Well, at least it was until about 5 or so years ago, give or take, as pure straight feminism has fallen out of fashion from the far left, as the "trans" ideology superseded it and, especially, when famous big-name radical feminists came out to oppose the invasion of women's spaces by "trans" people. In this example I'm talking a...

For some reason the developers of the Ubuntu Linux distribution have decided to replace all the GNU core utilities, which are written in C, with replacements written in Rust. The problem? For an unfathomable reason they are rushing the publication of these new replacements even before they are ready. Indeed, the GNU core utils have a big bunch of automated tests that are run on them every time before a new version release. The Rust replacements developed by the Ubuntu developers fail hundreds of these tests. Some of the replacements fail  all  the tests for that particular utility. On top of that, many of the replacements written in Rust are significantly slower than the originals that are written in C. Some of the utilities run a whopping 17 times slower than the original C counterpart. Not 17% slower; 17 times  slower! Other utilities (such as sort ) can't handle files even nearly as large as the original C version, failing with files that the C version has no problems ...

A McDonald's restaurant calls the police because one client of theirs has been in the bathroom for over an hour. (The story doesn't tell what the actual concern of the restaurant workers was, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that they were concerned about the guy's health, in other words, they were worried that he might have suffered some kind of medical episode and was in need of help, and thus they called 911.) The cops arrive and order the guy to exit the bathroom and the restaurant. He does so. Now, because American cops have an insatiable ID fetish, they absolutely demand the guy to ID himself even though he had not committed any crime, nor did they suspect him of any crime. They just wanted to ID him. It was clear that something unusual was going on because the man is confused, has difficulties understanding what he's being told, doesn't seem to remember even basic things, and is visibly in a confused and dazzled state. At points he doesn't even ...

Recently I made once again the mistake of trying to talk to a far-leftist in an online conversation. Unsurprisingly, I only got absolutely vile toxic rhetoric thrown at me, the same vile defamatory talking points the far left has been regurgitating for over a decade now. Such conversations are completely fruitless. You simply cannot have an actual conversation with brainwashed psychopathic drones. Nothing you can say will ever, ever make them even thinking of reconsidering some things that they have been indoctrinated into believing. Anyway, I suddenly realized something. It's pretty obvious, of course, but actually it's not  really  all that obvious when you think about it. And it's related precisely to that "regurgitating the same talking points". Indeed, the exact same namecalling, defamatory accusations, conspiracy theories and spurious claims that they have been spouting for a decade. Something that pretty much all of them repeat blindly, just parroting what ...

Recently a huge controversy happened in the most recent TwitchCon (something that has greatly hurt the already low reputation of that company), where some random guy just casually and blatantly, in front of hundreds of people, entered the area of one of the female Twitch streamers and just went and grabbed her and tried to kiss her without any permission, until a few seconds later one of the streamer's own bodyguards quickly stepped in and aggressively shoved the guy away. (From the video it appears that said bodyguard was distracted with something else and didn't see the guy enter that reserved area, and it took him a few seconds to notice what the guy was doing, and quickly stepped in to protect his employer.) If that wasn't obnoxious enough, the guy then just quickly walked away and exited the building, in full view of hundreds of people, including "security" staff, who did nothing to try to stop him. And if  that  wasn't obnoxious enough, the streamer late...

I have written several blog posts about how Japan is about to commit the biggest mistake of its entire existence by opening up its borders for mass immigration (from the poorest countries in the world, obviously, because that's  always  how it goes for some reason). If Japan ever gets flooded with massive amounts of immigrants from poor countries, its safety, culture, cleanliness and status as the highest-trust society in the world will very quickly be destroyed. This worry was prompted by the fact that Japan had already started this process a year or two ago, and has already experienced the first symptoms, such as vandalized and burglarized vending machines (which is normally extraordinarily rare), disturbance of the peace at public places and in public transport (which is even rarer), and several other initial signs. This process had been primarily driven by Japan's then-Prime Minister who had apparently contracted the far-leftism cancer and mind virus. Well, what do you kn...

I have written before about the incredible length that some people will go in order to get scammed , sometimes even unwittingly becoming "partners in crime" with the scammers in order to rob... themselves! They will sometimes go to incredible lengths to hide their own activity, in a very similar way as a criminal would do, except that these victims are not robbing someone else's money, they are "robbing" their own money, and sending it to the scammers, avoiding every possible safety measure and hurdle along the way. Recently I saw a CNN investigative piece about these scams, and the opening was incredible: It showed a police officer having to physically stop an older scam victim from inserting more banknotes into a bitcoin machine, with the victim trying to forcefully, almost desperately, insert even more banknotes. The cop had to literally block the slit on the machine with his hand to stop the woman from doing so because she wouldn't listen. And when the c...

The current Pope, Leo XIV, recently made a statement that the Catholic Church must strongly oppose the deportation of illegal migrants by the Trump administration. Oh, is that so, Pope Leo XIV? Well, why don't you put your money where your mouth is, and import all those illegal migrants into the Vatican? Or even some of them? It's so easy to be pro-immigration, particularly defending illegal migrants, when you don't have to see them in your own back yard. It's so easy when it's not you who has to carry the burden and see your own city being taken over by them. When it would come time to practice what you preach, suddenly all we get is excuses. Fucking hypocrite. 

For the longest time it used to just be "homosexuals" and then "gays" (for some reason "homosexual" fell out of use and is kind of considered an insult, and not used anymore, even though it is the most "official" term). The term "lesbian" was used if one wanted to be a bit more specific, but they too fell under that same umbrella. Then the "woke" social justice warriors started gaining a lot of power in society and with it came all kinds of wordplay. I still remember that for a relatively short period of time the first Holy Acronym was just "LGB", but the "T" was quite soon attached to it. It remained that four-letter acronym for quite some time, and in fact many people still use it to this day. However, over the years more and more letters started being attached to it, to the point that there basically is no one single "standard" Holy Acronym. The longest versions of the Acronym are outright  rid...

The Soviet Union was one of the darkest episodes in human history. It lasted for 70 years and was one of the most oppressive, authoritarian, totalitarian and  murderous  ideologies that have ever existed (the number of murders committed by the Soviet regime in peace time is estimated to be somewhere between 50 and 100 million people, mostly political prisoners, a number that absolutely dwarfs the Nazi Holocaust. Perhaps the only difference between the two is that the Soviets committed those murders in the span of 70 years, while the Nazis committed their murders in less than 5, which made the latter much more and horrendously "industrialized".) Yet, even people who fully know, understand and acknowledge this fact, and genuinely consider the Soviet Union to be one of the most horrendous things that ever happened to humanity, never ever to be repeated again, usually don't have much problem in at least having a rational and reasonable discussion and relatively neutral attitu...

Have you ever wondered why there's no antifa presence in the Nordic countries, especially in Finland and Norway? Especially Norway is quite notorious for pretty much zero antifa presence and activism. Why is that? Is antifa classified as an illegal terrorist organization there? Nope. Are people's fundamental constitutional rights being infringed upon there in order to stop them? Nope. Is some kind of suppression campaign being done behind the scenes by the government? Nope. The reason is pretty simple and straightforward: The Norwegian police enforces the law. That's it. It's that simple. The only and sole thing you need to do in order to get rid of antifa is to just enforce the law. That's it. You don't need anything else. Just apply the same law enforcement to them as to everybody else. Antifa can't survive if they aren't allowed to break the law. Whatever cops would do to an individual person, do to them in the same way. If they disrupt traffic, arres...

And now for something completely different. Yngwie Malmsteen is one of those "guitar gods" (at least in his own view), one of those very experienced and skillful "shredders" who play 20 notes per second on the electric guitar and play in extravagant tours for thousands of avid fans, and has been doing since the early 1980's, making him one of them with the longest career. Yet, many people outside his most rabid fandom just hate the guy. People who love and admire other great guitarists like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and many others. There's something about Yngwie that just rubs them in the wrong way, something that makes him different and dislikeable. And it's not just a few people hating him, but it's really common, and it's unlikely to be just a trend, a fad, some kind of unearned bad reputation that these people are just believing without reason and evidence, or as a meme (like what has happened with Nickelback.) Part of the criticism stems from...

I have written many times in this blog how the modern far left doesn't really have a set of values that they believe in. Instead, they will take whatever position is currently the prevailing narrative among them, and which gives them power and control over society. They will literally strongly support one position today and the exact opposite tomorrow, if that's what's trending among their ranks, and if it gives them power. They will also hold two completely opposite views at the same time (ie. doublethink), freely swapping between them at a moment's notice to whichever is more convenient for the current situation. They could literally flip-flop between two contrary position several times per minute, depending on the situation. There are countless examples of this that could be listed, but perhaps the most egregious and abhorrent one is their antisemitism. For the longest time the far-left heavily opposed antisemitism, for rather obvious reasons. However, like always, t...

I have written previously about the extremely strange phenomenon that happens in many parts of the United States, and that's how government officials and law enforcement officers refuse to do anything to illegal squatters , in other words, people who have invaded an unoccupied house and are living there illegally, without paying rent or anything. In the vast, vast majority of other countries (particularly the free democratic ones), such people would be removed and arrested by police probably within the hour. Not in many parts of the United States, though. Because of some extremely strange contrived set of laws, it appears that city officials and the police forces can't legally do anything to squatters without a court order, and even more strangely, getting that court order seems  extremely  difficult. There are documented cases of home owners trying  for years  to get rid of illegal squatters in their premises, without success. The police will do nothing about them, ...

Remember about four years ago when the American left, including all the leftist politicians, were up in arms about "insurrection", how absolutely horrendous of a crime it is, how the so-called "insurrection" was literally the worst event that has ever happened in the entire history of the United States (I'm not even making that up), and how every single person even remotely involved must absolutely be prosecuted in the harshest of terms (so much so that corrupt judges sentenced innocent people into astonishingly long sentences for no crimes whatsoever)? The horrors of "insurrection" was the constant talking point for several years. They kept pounding on it again, and again, and again, pretty much non-stop, trying to make it true via sheer repetition. Multiple kangaroo court congressional hearings were held about it, as the Democrats were trying to push really, really hard into making it an actual "insurrection" and trying to somehow throw Tru...

For quite a long time, pretty much as long as what can be called "primary school" has existed, pretty much everywhere in the world, students were not just taught to read, write and things like mathematics, history, geography and other theoretical stuff, but a quite big portion of the curriculum was dedicated to teaching them practical skills: How to cook, how to do woodwork, how to repair stuff at home, how to sew a button or a torn cloth, and so on and so forth. This was very common in the vast majority of schools up to some time in the 1970's or 1980's, give or take, depending on the country. In fact, it's  still  the case in some countries, although perhaps to lesser extents than it was in the past. Then something happened in many countries. There formed this strange mentality that teaching such practical everyday skills does not belong to school. That primary schools are nothing but preparation for high school and university, and you don't need to know how...

American far-leftists are complete psychopaths , every single one of them. They also cannot open their mouths without lies pouring out . Pretty much everything they say, when it's not pure hatred and racism, is a lie. The complete list of lies that they have promoted during the last ten years would be really, really long. However, their latest prominent lie is so incredibly obnoxious that it's just astonishing. They feel absolutely no shame about lying about it, no matter how clear it is that it's not true. What is it this time? The claim that "Donald Trump shut down the government", or the Trump administration, or the Republicans (but most importantly Trump himself.) If you guessed that he did no such thing, you would be 100% correct. Neither Trump, nor his administration, nor anybody in the Republican Party shut down the government. It's the  Democratic Party  that shut down the government, just like they did 8 years ago. They, and only they, did that, and t...

Some time ago, perhaps 10 to 15 years ago, the police forces in the United Kingdom, for reasons unknown (I have never seen anywhere how or why it started), started becoming a speech police: They started policing people's "wrong" opinions online. Since then it has only escalated more and more. What started by just a dozen or so incidents per year quickly escalated to several hundreds of arrests per year, to several thousand arrests per year, and there has been no end in sight to this escalation. It has become so bad that, I kid you not, the UK police is making over 30 arrests  every day  for things that people have said online. That's something like ten thousand arrests per year. And that's just the number of arrests; the number of times that the UK police goes to harass people at their homes, sometimes even in the middle of the night (literally!), is even higher. They investigate, harass and arrest literally tens of thousands of people every single year, while at ...