What grinds my gears

If you search for the richest people who ever existed, some such lists will have one "Mansa Musa" at the top, some kind of king of western Africa from the 1300's. How rich was he? How much wealth did he have? We don't know. Nor do these lists tell how much it was. So how do we know he was the richest person who ever existed? We don't. He just is, because he is, period. Sure, we don't know how much wealth he had, but he's still the richest person who ever existed. Because. I'm not even kidding. Historians, and of course Wikipedia , have a very detailed account of his life and acts. These are recounted in great detail and with conviction, as if they were very well known and certain indisputable historical facts. These include the historical "fact" that he once traveled from western Africa across the Saharan desert all the way to Egypt with several tens of thousands of people and innumerable amount of gold, and freely distributed this gold there...

The FBI some time ago officially declared the so-called "sovereign citizen" movement a terrorist organization. This is based on about a dozen or so incidents where "sovereign citizens" engaged in a deathly shootout with police officers that have happened during the last 30-or-so years (these shootouts very directly, clearly and unambiguously having been motivated by their belief system.) Note that there are thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of people in the United States who subscribe to the sovereign citizen conspiracy theory and belief system. Compared to the number of believers, the amount of deadly altercations caused by the belief system is abysmally low. Probably less than 0.1% of all the sovereign citizen believers have ever engaged in a violent altercation with anybody, much less the police. Yet, those dozen-or-so incidents still have justified the FBI to declare the entire movement as a terrorist one. Now compare and contrast that to the far-leftis...

There's currently a citizens' petition going on in Finland asking the parliament to officially add a third option for gender in all official documents. I heavily oppose this petition and really wish it will either not gather enough signatures, or be rejected. Leftists could ask: "Why? Why do you care? It doesn't affect you." I care because I know it  will  affect me eventually. I have seen it happening in country after country: The UK, Germany, Canada, several other countries. Once the far-leftist cult gets a foothold on the government and starts enacting laws, it's going to be a slippery slope. This is  not  just the "slippery slope fallacy" because we already have several examples of what this causes. I care because I don't want a few years from now the cops kicking down my door, taking me to jail and confiscating my computers because of things I have said online. Because that's what always happens. It starts "innocently" with the...

Rather obviously this was extremely easy to predict already over 10 years ago, in other words, that the open source development community, particularly everything involving Linux, would be invaded, taken over and completely radicalized by far-leftism and far-leftist activists. But while this was always an extremely easy prediction to make, it's still sad to see it happen before own very eyes. The invasion was quite slow, quiet and "under the radar" for over a decade, but in the past year or so it has been put in full gear, and they are not holding back anymore. Project after project has become openly, blatantly and brazenly radicalized, with the most radical views and actions. For example, the organization that's primarily in charge of the development of the X.org software and its attempted "successor" Wayland software, has for a couple of years now been on a very active and aggressive quest to completely kill the former and replace it with the latter (their...

We are witnessing history in the making in the United States, and worldwide, because never before in the entire history of humanity has there ever, ever been in any country that has ever existed, constant country-wide violent daily protests for about 10 years now, non-stop, without fail. During some days the protests might be somewhat fewer and somewhat less violent and disruptive, but it's safe to say that during the past 10 or so years there has not been a single day, not one, when there was not a single far-leftist protest somewhere in the country. And the vast, vast majority of the time it has been at a minimum in several dozens of places. In fact, some cities have seen periods of literally  months  of constant non-stop violent protests, every single day without fail (usually with the blessings of the city government.)  Before this, the left in the United States, ie. the people who vote for the Democratic Party, have been brainwashed and radicalized for about a decade...

Ask any American lawyer, and he will tell you that you should never, ever voluntarily consent to cops searching your car. If they ask you, you must always clearly state "I do not consent to any searches". A Floridan man had clearly not gotten that memo and some time ago found out the hard way why that's a good idea. Cops stopped him for "window tints", ordered him out of the car, put him in handcuffs (which is already legally questionable) and asked if they could search his car. The man, knowing that there was absolutely nothing illegal in his car, was naive enough to consent. He probably thought that the traffic stop would go easier if he just consented. A lawyer would have told him a huge categorical "NO!" but alas, not many people know this. There was indeed nothing illegal in his car, but what followed was a year-long nightmare for him that not only had a big psychological toll on him, but cost who knows how much money. The cops found some prescrip...

As I have written before , flat-earthers cognitively live in a very strange world. A world that's effectively like the Bronze Age with modern technology inserted into it. In other words, a world where yes, maybe we have some technology, but we still have no idea how the universe works, we know very little about physics, astronomy or the world itself, we have no idea what's beyond the visible sky, and most of what we do is nothing but guesswork and religious beliefs. They seem to think that all scientists are nothing but cult members who blindly believe what they are told and never question anything, and who most certainly don't know what's going on in the universe, or what the shape of the Earth even is. And, somehow, this cult spans the entire of the Earth, all countries, all the hundreds of thousands if not outright millions of scientists, all of whom unanimously agree on the same belief system without question, without skepticism, without corroboration, completely bl...