What grinds my gears

The " motte-and-bailey " fallacy is an argumentative tactic where a larger questionable ideology, when challenged, is defended by retreating to a small portion of the ideology that's generally more accepted. The analogy is that in normal circumstances ("peace time") the ideology preaches all of its tenets, most of which are morally or otherwise questionable (in other words, it operates in the wider "bailey" area), but when questioned and challenged ("war time"), the apologist retreats to the more defensible much smaller area of the ideology (in other words, the fortified "motte" at the center). Here are some concrete examples of this very tactic used by the modern far left, which clarify how this tactic is actually being used in practice out there: Feminism Especially 10+ years ago (perhaps a bit less nowadays because the concept of "feminism" has got a bad reputation among the left, mainly because of J. K. Rowling ), when...

Or, perhaps, "theft" is not technically speaking the right term to use, because it implies that the action is illegal, which in these cases it might not technically be. However, it's an extremely common practice and it's tiresome. Whether one likes YouTube's copyright enforcement system or not, at least it does have the positive effect that if you create and upload an original video, if someone just downloads it and uploads it as-is on their own channel, you can take it down immediately when you notice. However, what happens when the footage is public domain, or in other ways not really falling under copyright of an entity who could take it down? One example of such footage is, in the United States, court camera videos: These are in the public domain by law, and thus anybody can distribute them as they want. There are also many other similar examples of footage created by the government or other entities that do not fall under copyright (or where the copyright is ...

If you watch, for example, this video by the YouTube channel Team Skeptic, where the author comments on yet another "sovereign citizen" who is foolishly representing himself in court, you'll notice how, particularly in one part of the video, he again and again insists that he "doesn't understand anything". He uses lots of other words that mean the same thing, but he just outright refuses to say that he "understands" a single thing. He "comprehends", he "grasps", he "knows", he yada yada yada, but most definitely and categorically he doesn't "understand" anything. This even though the judge quite clearly expresses that she herself doesn't understand why he is having such a huge problem with that word, and why he is playing that kind of word games. The judge makes it pretty clear that "understand" just means the same thing as to comprehend, to grasp, to know what's being said, there's...

Unlike many American far-leftist activists love to claim, the US does not have "hate speech" laws. So-called "hate speech" is not illegal because it's, still, considered to be speech protected by the First Amendment. Of course that doesn't stop cops and courts from prosecuting people for "hate speech" anyway. They just masquerade it as something else. As the saying goes, "the good thing about laws is that there are so many of them to choose from". It's the stalinistic principle of "show me the man and I'll show you the crime." Or, in this particular example, the woman. Some time ago a controversy arose when someone published a video of a white woman using the "N-word" against a child, as well as some random man who was loitering near the playground (not related to the child), in the city of Rochester, New York. Obviously that sent the far-leftists completely crazy. The city wanted to sue her because quite obvio...

Some time ago the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts , had installed a system called ShotSpotter , which is a series of directional microphones installed on building roofs, and computer systems able to detect if gunshots are being fired, and locate their position in the city, for rapid police response to possible shootings. Because the city in question is extremely leftist and, thus, filled with far-leftist activist zealots, those zealots came up with the conspiracy theory that this system could be used to spy on people and that it, somehow, puts black and brown people, trans people and so on in danger, and that it causes "overpolicing". Thus, they organized a protest against it at the city council, and one after another they argued that the system is dangerous, and that they don't need it for the community to be safe. The city placated to the zealots and removed the system. Two months later, on the 4th of July of 2026, a shooting happened, with the victim bleeding to death...

This argument is so asinine and so utterly silly that it feels like parody, or like a straw-man invented by anti-leftists (ie. something that some anti-leftists claim that pro-immigration leftists are saying even though they aren't). However, it's a real argument. And not just by some random anonymous twitter users, but actual elected politicians in the UK and some other countries. And the argument is: Without immigrants we wouldn't have exotic foods, like curry or falafel. And yes, those politicians are presenting that argument in all seriousness. It's not like they are lightening the mood with a joke, or doing a bit of self-parody or something like that. They are presenting it 100% seriously. It shouldn't even be necessary to explain why that's a completely asinine argument, but here we go anyway: Firstly, you don't need to import any immigrants in order to be able to eat foreign cuisine. This should be so utterly obvious that it shouldn't need to be e...

During the past 15-or-so years the United States has become astonishingly racist. And I truly mean it. Actual racism, actual racist discrimination by the establishment, by megacorporations, by large powerful institutions, by universities, by schools, everything. American universities have engaged in blatant and clear racial discrimination in admissions, even though for them it's actually illegal in the United States. For some reason the government has been very slow to react to it, even though it has been going on for at least 20 years. American corporations have also been engaging in clear and blatant racial discrimination for at least 15 years. According to recent statistics that examined the top 500 tech companies in the United States, only 6% of all new hires were white people, even though they account for over 80% of the population. This is not some kind of strange anomaly or coincidence, as it's very explicitly enforced by the higher-ups in these companies. For example, I...