What grinds my gears

I have a friend who some years ago had to go through a medical procedure that left his mobility impaired. He can only walk with crutches. (Whether he will ever be able to fully walk without them is unclear.) He is also quite overweight, and as you might guess, it would be a great help to his mobility and ability to walk around and do everyday tasks if he were to lose a significant amount of weight and become fit. All those excess kilograms aren't exactly helping his everyday life. He was absolutely decided on losing weight, and become as fit as his physical condition allows him. He prepared himself with the right knowledge for this. In terms of diet and exercise, what works and what doesn't, what's the right kind of food to eat, and how much. How much is too much, and how much is too little. What kind of exercise and diet program are the most efficient and suitable. He acquired a lot of nutritional knowledge, was absolutely prepared and adamant to become healthy, slim and...

In a previous blog post I wrote about a youtuber who used to be quite big. About 6 years ago he made several videos that got over 2 million views, multiple others with over 1 million views, and even the average view count on his other videos during that era was in the 200-300 thousand views per video. Then somewhere around 3 or 4 years ago he experienced a sharp decline, until it was about 20-30 thousand views per video on average, with only a few rare videos breaking the 100k mark. (Trump becoming the President of the United States at that time is not a coincidence.) Out of curiosity I checked his channel now, almost a year later, and it appears that he seems to have trouble even breaking the 10k views mark, only very occasionally achieving that many. The average seems to be in the ballpark of about 8 thousand views. One particular phenomenon that I notice in his latest videos is the sheer amount of 2-hour long podcasts. During a particular recent period of about 5 months he ha...

I have written in past blog posts (such as here and here ) about why I have stopped following and supporting the Games Done Quick marathons because, among several other things, it's quite clearly run by regressive leftist ideologues who are pushing a leftist feminist agenda onto their viewers for social engineering purposes. But what do I base this claim on? How do I know they are run by regressive leftist social justice ideologues? Sure, they impose ridiculously harsh punishments for even the smallest of transgressions, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are SJWs. It may just mean that they are trying to be as corporate-friendly and advertiser-friendly as possible. And sure, they have had time and again that one transvestite as a host and commentator, but maybe they are just open-minded, non-prejudiced, and that person was genuinely the best for that job from all the other candidates. Who am I to say that he was chosen because of identity politics ideology rather than m...

I have written earlier about common misconceptions about free speech that especially the regressive left espouses (out of ignorance or on purpose). That blog post goes into a lot more detail about it, but here's a very quick summary: "Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences": On the contrary, that's exactly what it means. If there are consequences to you from you expressing your opinion, any sort of punishment, then it's not free speech anymore; it's restricted speech. (Receiving criticism is not a "consequence" in this regard. Presenting criticism is itself very much part of the fundamental notion of free speech.) "Hate speech is not free speech": Yes, it is. Whether you find an opinion abhorrent or not has no bearing on whether it's free speech or not. As long as an expression of opinion is not a demonstrable and direct incitement to violence or crime, that directly and demonstrably causes people to commit cri...

I'm not exactly sure when or why, or by whom, this absolutely massive almost world-wide PSA campaign about drinking enough water started, but it has been so successful that probably not a single person alive and conscious hasn't heard the pitch. You have probably heard at least some version of it, I'm sure. People don't drink enough water and get dehydrated. People should drink such and such amount of water every day. If you feel thirsty it's already too late, you are already dehydrated. Yada yada yada. Have you, however, ever stopped to think: "Hmm, ok. But what exactly are the drawbacks and side-effects of this "dehydration" that I don't even notice, which seemingly happens because I don't drink enough water?" Because almost nobody does. If a friend of yours, or somebody, ever tells you about you needing to drink enough water, or about being dehydrated even if you don't notice it, try asking him exactly what the consequences a...

I have been saying for years that social justice warriors and their "allies" (which you should never become , seriously) are extremely naive in that they feel safe in their beliefs, stances and, especially, in the groups they associate with, ie. other social justice warriors. They seem unable to understand the totalitarian vindictiveness of their own side: They think they are on the right side of history and thus safe among their own people, and they don't understand nor want to accept that their own side could turn against them at any moment, for any reason. It takes but one single step away from the (ever-changing) rules of their ideology, one single transgression, and the person may quickly find herself a pariah and the enemy, in the blink of an eye. There is absolutely no safety in that group. It's an absolutely precarious group to belong to. J. K. Rowling has recently got a taste of exactly this. If not an outright regressive leftist social justice warrior, J...

And now for something completely different. For some reason I seem to have this small quirk, maybe a bit of a pet peeve, that I find mildly frustrating to watch videos of people eating. I was reminded of this yesterday, when I was browsing twitch.tv when I stumbled across a channel that looked like an interesting novel idea: It was a guy playing jazz on the piano and playing (online) chess at the same time. I suppose as some kind of mild challenge. Can you concentrate on both things at the same time? I think the stream had been going on for quite a long time, but a bit irritatingly, a mere 20 or 30 seconds after I joined and started watching, he had to get the laundry out of the machine or something (right in the middle of a chess match), so he was away for something like five minutes. When he came back, he took an apple and started eating it (rather than, you know, continue playing the piano) while playing the chess match. Do you know how long he ate that one single apple on s...