What grinds my gears

One of the favorite stupid arguments that flat-earthers love to make is that if the Earth were a globe, that would mean that airplanes would need to be constantly pitching down in order to follow the Earth's surface. This argument is stupid and hilarious because they seem to have some kind of problem with the notion that yes, indeed, airplanes  do  pitch constantly down when flying even slightly longer distances. I don't even understand what the problem is, or why they think that's a problem. (Well, actually, like I explain in this other blog post , I  do  know why they have a problem with it, and that's because they think that "constantly pitching down" requires the pilot to be constantly pushing on the yoke of the airplane. They don't understand that's not how airplanes maintain altitude. Airplanes maintain a particular altitude above the surface using the autopilot, which itself mostly uses trimming, not the main control surfaces. Even if the pilot ...

Quite notoriously and infamously, the former President of the United States Joe Biden issued more presidential clemency grants than any other president in the history of the country. A so-called "presidential clemency grant" is either a so-called "reprieve" (which is a delay in carrying out a sentence), a "commutation" (which is a reduction of a sentence), or a full-on "pardon" (which is the complete annulment of a sentence). The top 5 so far, as of writing this, are:  Donald Trump, during his first term in office, granted 238 of them. Ronald Reagan granted 406. Bill Clinton granted 457. Barack Obama granted 1927. Joe Biden granted 4245, setting an all-time record, by a huge margin. What's particularly notable and telling is that about 2500 of them were granted and signed during Biden's last three days in office. That's more clemencies granted in three days than any other president has ever granted in their entire terms in office (inc...

There's one thing that appears to be, at least my view, astonishingly common: People who consider it outright sacrilege if a steak is anything above "medium rare". I'm not even kidding: Tons and tons of people consider even "medium rare" a bit too cooked, but barely acceptable, and think that the only correct way is a full-on "rare" steak. Ask any "steak connoisseur", or any professional chef, and he will tell you that. Heck even celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay thinks that. Well, I'm going to commit sacrilege here: I  hate  rare steak. I  hate  medium rare steak. Medium well done is still on the more disgusting side, but bearable. I love well done steak. A rare steak is just disgusting. I don't like the taste at all. I once went to a more expensive fancy steak restaurant and ordered a well done one, and it was literally the best steak I have eaten in my entire life, no exaggeration. If I had ordered it rare, it would have been ...

Because of the recent solar eclipse, flat-earthers all over the internet are once again making tons and tons of social media posts and videos about how the eclipse is not caused by the Moon being in front of the Sun and yada yada yada, making up all kinds of random stuff using completely made-up arguments and blurry photos. Yet, once again, I have not seen a single mention, a single comment, a single reference to, a single explanation attempt, a single excuse, not even a vague hand-wave or dismissal, nothing, not a peep, about the one question that they just have zero answers to. From the thousands and thousands and thousands of posts and videos, I have yet to see a single one that tackles this problem, mentions it in any way, and much less tries to explain it. And that is: How exactly are scientists able to predict solar eclipses literally decades in advance, to the accuracy of seconds, and where the path of totality and partiality will be, to the accuracy of meters? Indeed, scientist...

I recently saw a YouTube video that was a sort of interview of a player who had started playing Star Citizen and had spent a whopping 11 thousand dollars on that game in one year. Not even going into the quality and state of the game, even if it were the best and most polished game in existence, spending 11 thousand dollars on it is just completely insane. I am quite an avid gamer myself, and have been buying video games for over 30 years now. I did a rough estimate of how many games I have ever purchased and how much money I have spent in total on them during these 30 years, and it's in fact somewhere on that same ballpark, actually. Maybe a bit more. Say, very roughly somewhere around 12 thousand dollars in total, ie. about 400 dollars a year. I think about 400 dollars a year in video games is quite moderate. I very, very rarely buy full-priced 60+ dollar games, and almost always wait for a significant discount. During those 30 years I have, perhaps, bought about 20 or so games a...

I have come up with the theory that when it comes to political activism there are, roughly speaking, two types of activists: "Genuine" and "dogmatic".  "Genuine" in this context does not necessarily mean "good", as in doing political activism for a good cause. Many activists are completely genuine but advocating for absolutely detrimental policies. By "genuine" I mean that the activists are fighting for a specific cause, to correct a specific wrong (at least in their view) and, most importantly, if that "wrong" is corrected, they will be content and stop their activism. Problem fixed, it does not exist anymore, thus there's no need to do any more activism, and they can go on with their lives. The vast majority of this kind of activism is for a good cause, some is for a rather irrelevant cause, and sometimes, as mentioned, it might actually be detrimental. But the crucial point is that it's a cause that the activists ge...

I happened to stumble across one of those "1950's ads that didn't age so well" videos on YouTube. Some of the ads in question have indeed not aged well at all. Such as a medical doctor (or, at a minimum, someone claiming to be) exalting the virtues of smoking a particular brand of cigarettes. Or an ad showing medical research results about how a particular brand of cigarette is good for the throat and sinuses. Or an advertisement about a beauty product containing actual radioactive radium (with the ad prominently stating that fact, and claiming that it's not dangerous in such low doses.) The same video, however, also had a couple of ads that showed an archetypal 1950's happy housewife doing something nice for her husband, like for example preparing and serving him coffee (of the particular brand being advertised, of course.) And... that's it. There was nothing more to it in those ads than that. Both had the actress talk about how she wanted to make her hus...