What grinds my gears

Many commentators, especially those on the anti-SJW side, have strongly blamed China for allowing the current coronavirus pandemic to become as widespread as it has, due to China delaying reporting about it. Many of these commentators have suggested and even demanded strong sanctions against China because of this. There are a lot of things that China has done wrong, and still is doing wrong, about this situation, but I have to strongly disagree with the above sentiment. The Chinese government did initially try to censor the spread of rumors and information about the new possible epidemic, it did severely mistreat several Chinese medical professionals and press reporters (up to borderline or even outright human rights violations), and it did (and to a large extent still does) mistreat the residents of Wuhan (in many cases also up to borderline or even outright human rights violations). There are many actions taken by the Chinese government related to this situation that are question...

As the social justice ideology is invading and infiltrating every single aspect of western society, it is no surprise that more and more big video game developer companies have been either invaded by social justice ideologues, or adopted the ideology on their own. The effects of this invasion can be seen in many things, but one particular thing that people have noticed is a general and slightly strange trend, especially among the most notorious SJW gaming companies, of "uglification" of fictional female characters in video games. The character models used in modern realistic video games are generally not created from nothing. Maybe in the near future advances in technology (and perhaps AI) will allow creating entire characters from nothing, but so far essentially the only way to create realistic-looking human models is to 3D-scan real actors and actresses, both for their body shape and their movement. Quite often the character models in realistic modern video games look...

Recently Donald Trump, during a White House briefing, made a comment about the coronavirus, light and disinfectants that was quite unclearly worded. The media, celebrities and big social media influencers jumped to the opportunity to claim that Trump had suggested injecting bleach into the body in order to cure the coronavirus. Snopes.com, a once neutral fact-checking site for urban legends and claims, has in recent years for some reason contracted a really bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, and their entire platform has become pretty much nothing but an anti-Trump and anti-conservative mouthpiece , where they distort facts and claims to defend far-left Democrat politicians , and who have in fact become outright activists fighting against "pro-Trump" organizations to have them deplatformed . So how did they tackle with the claim " U.S. President Donald Trump suggested during a White House briefing that injecting disinfectants could treat COVID-19 "? Rathe...

I have a friend who is not a social justice warrior, but is quite left-leaning especially when it comes to certain subjects (that appear a lot in regressive leftist narrative), but he does agree on less left-leaning opinions sometimes as well. When we have a discussion about sociopolitical subjects, he sometimes presents really strong and good counter-arguments to my opinions. Sometimes they are so strong that I struggle to find a good answer on the spot, and really have to think about it. He's quite good at challenging my opinions and positions sometimes. I wouldn't have it any other way! It's good to have one's opinions strongly challenged from time to time. It's good to have one's echo chamber being punctured with strong counter-arguments sometimes. It's good to get alternative views, and to really have to review one's own opinions, stances and beliefs. It may sometimes even cause a slight change in opinions, when one gets a new perspective on som...

One time when I was in middle school (this happened to be in Spain), I had brought some playing cards (standard 52-card deck) in order to play some solitaire games during recess. I had recently been gifted a book with like a hundred solitaire games, so I was inspired by that. The French playing cards (your archetypal clubs/diamonds/hearts/spades cards) were actually quite a rarity in Spain, at least back then, and most people only associated them with poker games in movies. The Spanish cards were the most common there. Obviously some students found my activity particularly curious. Two students in particular had a relatively common misconception that poker was illegal in Spain. Not just playing for money, but any kind of poker playing. (I don't really know how or why that was such a common misconception, but it was.) And they were staring at my solitaire playing discussing among themselves whether it was "poker" or not (even though "playing poker" solo is ra...

Since for almost as long as Formula One races have existed and been popular, there have always been people complaining about why the governing body has so many rules and limitations on the cars. Indeed, the Formula One rulebook for the design of the cars makes the Tax Code read like a children's book, and the phonebook of a big city like light reading purple prose. So year after year people complain about it. "Why do they have all these rules? Why not just allow the teams to design whatever car they want? Why do they need to specify every single tiny thing?" Most of these people don't understand the very idea of Formula One. That word, "formula", is not there just because it sounds cool. A "formula car" does not, in fact, refer merely to "a car that participates in Formula One races". The word "formula" there is not random. It means exactly what it says on the tin: It's a race using cars of very particular specifications...

In my predictions for the near future part 17 I predicted that the social justice ideologues, because they hate everything that's traditional and part of culture, will soon start, among other things, advocating for the eradication of the concept of "family". Quite soon after that, the first example arose, of some feminist advocating exactly that . "Well," one might have thought, "that's just the opinion of one single feminist. Who cares? She's just some random wacko." Well, it's not just the opinion of an absolutely fringe minority. Consider, for example, this recent article at opendemocracy.net, openly and directly advocating for the very same thing: The coronavirus crisis shows it's time to abolish the family Consider, for example, this gem in that article: And thirdly, even when the private nuclear household poses no direct physical or mental threat to one’s person – no spouse-battering, no child rape, and no queer-ba...