What grinds my gears

1) The so-called "modern audience" is not your customerbase. The "modern audience" is not the segment of the population that buys your game. Placating to the "modern audience" at the expense of gamers is only alienating the people who actually buy your games. 2) People buy and play video games as a form of escapism, to take a break from the stresses of real life. They don't play video games in order to be lectured about sociopolitics. They most particularly do not play video games in order to be lectured about far-leftist ideology. People see and don't like propaganda in their games. 3) People do not care one iota about being "represented" in video games. When people play, say, a Mario game, they don't think "I am Mario, this Mario character here represents me, he is me personified." When people play a Tomb Raider game they don't think "I am Lara Croft, she represents me." In fact, when it comes to games with e...

For a few decades now there has been a somewhat fringe but not absolutely insignificant movement that claims that raw food is somehow healthier, better and "more natural" than cooked food. The notion is that raw food is more nutritious and healthier, while cooking makes food less nutritious and even detrimental to one's health. This taps strongly on the so-called "naturalistic fallacy": In other words, the notion that things that are perceived as "more natural", less changed by artificial human actions, is better and healthier. Don't get me wrong, there is  some  validity to that notion when it comes to food, in the extreme opposite end of the spectrum: In other words, ultra-processed food is genuinely less healthy than less-processed food. This is a very known fact, and nutritionists and the medical community in general have been warning about this for decades now. Ultra-processed food tends to have less nutrients and more artificial additives (su...

Particularly in the United States, probably not a single day goes by without there being at a minimum a dozen protests by far-leftist radicals around the country, almost all of them breaking the law in on way or another (which law enforcement just ignores, obviously, because there's some kind of very strange two-tiered law enforcement system in the country.) And this has been going on for over 10 years now. It  might  be that during Biden's presidency there  might  have been a few days during those four years that there were no protests anywhere in the country, but even that's unlikely. The constant daily protesting has a rather unintended side-effect that the far-leftist protesters are completely oblivious to: When protests are a daily occurrence, it dilutes their effectiveness. For the longest time it used to be that protests were effective because of the amount of attention that they got. When they were unusual, people paid attention to them. They got press covera...

Religions, cults and radical ideologies oftentimes use deceitful subterfuge when conversing with people in order to try to trick them and perhaps convert them into the ideology. The tactic is: Rather than directly blurt out the doctrine they are trying to convince the other person of, they start with statements and questions that are easy to agree with, and which touch on beliefs of the ideology. So they will have a half-hour conversation with the person, constantly making easy-to-agree statements and asking subtly leading questions that most people will answer in a way that conforms to the ideology (at least superficially), and the conversation will slowly veer deeper and deeper into the topics of the ideology, slowly luring the person into it. After all if the person has been agreeing with everything for half an hour, and everything seems to be ideologically very comfortable and agreeable, and when one has built a sort of social connection with the other person, it's then natural...

Martin Luther King, in his world-famous landmark inspirational speech in 1963 quite famously said: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!" This short paragraph has become absolutely iconic, and is not just one of the most famous utterances in history, but arguably one of the most influential and important ones as well, summarizing the most important core concepts of the fair and equal treatment of people in society. One of the best ideas ever expressed in one of the most important speeches in the history of humanity. For 50 years the American left, the "liberals", the Democrats, had absolutely no problems with this idea, and fully embraced, promoted and promulgated it. They constantly referred to it as one of the most fundamental concepts and cornerstones of an equal and fair constitutional justice system and socie...

The initial police report of the incident said that a traffic cop observed a car "driving erratically", signaled it to stop, after which the driver exited the car and charged at the cop while wielding a knife. Thus, the police officer, fearing for his life, had no choice but to shoot him. ("Fearing for his life" explicitly stated in the report.) Later, when the bodycam footage and security camera footage from a nearby building were released, it turned out that the entire report was a huge lie. The driver never exited his car. He didn't even so much as open the car's door. The cop didn't shoot at someone charging at him with a knife: He ran to the car and started shooting with his service pistol through the closed window. And no, it's not like the cop approached the car, noticed the person inside perhaps wielding some weapon, and then took his pistol and started shooting. No, the cop immediately took out his pistol when he exited his patrol car, point...

Being able to create and publish independent third-party reviews of products made by some person or company is one of the most fundamental core features of the principle of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and is pretty much universally guaranteed with extremely strong protections in the vast majority if not all jurisdictions that operate under constitutional rights and freedoms. In many countries this right to review products is explicitly enshrined in law, in others it's a standard interpretation of the Constitution and consumer rights laws by courts. The main goal of independent reviews of products being a strongly protected right is, of course, for the benefit of customers: Third-party reviews are a very important part of purchasing decision making, and most free countries guarantee and protect this. Consumers have the right to know the details of products they are thinking of purchasing, before purchasing them, and only independent third-parties are qualified to pub...