What grinds my gears

The current era of worldwide communication and trade has given raise to absolutely humongous international private megacorporations with literally hundreds of millions, sometimes even billions, of active customers, who are in some aspects for all intents and purposes more powerful than most governments, at least when it comes to free constitutional countries. These giant megacorporations could for all intents and purposes be considered "quasi-governmental": Not only do they have hundreds of millions of people, sometimes even billions of people, as their customers (which is way more than the majority of actual countries), but often the services provided by these megacorporations are not just inconsequential nor discardable or replaceable at a whim. Indeed, when it comes to several of these megacorporations, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of smaller companies, as well as their millions and millions of employees, heavily depend on the services provided by these meg...

The authors of the (in)famous TV series South Park are absolutely irreverent and unhinged when it comes to all kinds of modern sociopolitics, not shying away from parodying, making fun of, and even outright insulting left-wing politics, right-wing politics, religions (including Christianity and, quite unusually, even Islam), cults (most prominently Scientology), transgenderism, celebrities and politicians, and so on and so forth. Some of these parodies and mockeries have been so blatant that the targets of them have even tried to sue the authors. It is my understanding that the authors consider such lawsuits (and threats of lawsuits) badges of honor. Needless to say, the authors aren't afraid of being called names. They clearly don't care if they are called transphobes, islamophobes, "fascists", and so on and so forth. With one quite prominent exception: They quite clearly are morbidly afraid of being deemed racists. The authors clearly do not subscribe to any of the ...

Many have heard of and even seen some videos about so-called "sovereign citizens" in the United States (and in this day and age in a few other countries, such as the UK and Australia), although most of them have stopped calling themselves with that moniker because of its bad rep and bad publicity (which in itself is funny: They say "I'm not a sovereign citizen" yet follow the sovcit script word-for-word, going though every single talking point, every single claim, every single antic.) Most people, however, don't know much about them and only have the notion that they are just deluded individuals who have declared themselves as not being "citizens of the US" and instead being "sovereign", ie. they belong to their own mobile "mini-country" of sorts, population 1, and thus they don't need to follow the laws of the United States because they aren't citizens after all, that they have diplomatic immunity, like they were some k...

I have two friends who are a married couple, with two small children. They are extremely loving and caring parents, and those kids are quite literally the most important thing in their lives. They are also practicing Christians, at least to some extent. (People here are not preachy and tend to keep their private lives and beliefs private, but from what I have seen they are practicing Christians to at least some extent. They go to church at least sometimes and participate in some church-related activities, and they have enrolled their older son to church activities, and they have at least some Christian paraphernalia at home. They have also on occasion made some comments about their Christian beliefs.) They have also swallowed the modern far-leftist ideology. They are very supportive of the alphabet people and the related far-leftist activism. And, yes, embracing the far-leftist ideology does include being 100% in favor of abortion. So yes, these practicing Christian mother and father o...

If you have been following the modern far-leftism / anti-leftism sociopolitical war "only" for the last 7-8 years, you might have not even heard of one Phil "Thunderf00t" Mason nor know who he is or what he was known for. In the early days of YouTube antifeminism/anti-leftism, from about 2011 to about 2016, give or take, he was one of the big names on that front, alongside other big names like The Amazing Atheist (another name that more recent anti-leftists probably have never heard of), Sargon of Akkad, etc. In fact, Thunderf00t was such a big name in the anti-leftist community that he became pretty much the Public Enemy #1 of the far left, especially in the atheist community, for some years, so much so that for a time he was under a massive harassment campaign (which ultimately was pitifully weak because of his tenured position as a researcher in a university in the Czech Republic, which made him essentially untouchable.) Yet, today he is mostly unknown in these ...

Some years ago several European countries launched investigations about so-called "loot boxes" in video games. This is because if the contents of said "loot boxes" can be sold to others with real-world money, they may in fact infringe on the lottery and raffle laws of many countries. And, in some countries, they might even be infringing even if the contents cannot be sold for real-world money. Most countries that have lottery laws define a "raffle" as having these characteristics: The customer purchases a sealed product with money. The contents of the sealed product are randomized and may have different monetary values. The product is sealed, ie. it's not possible to know what's inside before the purchase. The contents may potentially have more monetary value than what was paid. Because of these characteristics it is generally considered a form of lottery or gambling, and thus subject to the lottery laws of most countries. The reason why lotteries ...

The Finnish are people who in general prefer to be reserved and quiet, and not to bother others. You might find very loud talking and laughing between drunkards at a bar, but that's about it. And even that's actually surprisingly uncommon. If you eg. travel by bus, or go to a fast food restaurant, you can usually expect relative peace and quiet. Even teenagers who may be there usually use only moderate volume to speak to each other, rarely raising their voice or laughing excessively loudly. Most people speak much quieter than that. Recently I was at a fast food restaurant here when I heard a group of people sitting at some table speak EXTREMELY loudly. Really, really loudly. Like ten times louder than anybody else. You could hear their racket throughout the entire restaurant. After some time they finished and left, and I kid you not, you could still hear them from half a block away, when they were outside. And I mean, I could hear them while I was still inside the restaurant ....