What grinds my gears

One of the most evil recent developments in the consumer technology industry, which has been plaguing certain products for quite some years now, is the phenomenon of a company selling some kind of electronic household "smart" product, initially with completely unlimited access, and then later uploading a firmware update to the device (often without user consent and full knowledge of what the update is going to do) that locks some features of the device behind a paywall. It is, for all intents and purposes, ransomware: Locking the user out of some features of the device and demanding money to unlock it (and usually not just a one-time payment, but a regular subscription). It's bad and questionable enough if electronic devices have this kind of limitation from the get-go, since purchase. It's a million times more indefensible if the limitations are only pushed onto the device later, long after purchase. There are many infamous examples of this. And, apparently, this is ...

Some American far-leftists have been so indoctrinated and so deeply fear-mongered into being scared of the mythical "far right" that they think is prevalent everywhere in the country, that they have contracted literal delusional paranoia to the extent of being outright life-crippling and self-destructive. One particularly notable (and hilarious) recent example is a woman, a self-proclaimed "scholar of the far right" (whatever that's supposed to mean), who had become so utterly paranoid about said "far right" that she recently moved to Canada, for the explicitly stated reason to "flee" the "fascist" regime of the United States and the "far right". And mind you, she lived in Los Angeles, one of the most if not the most far-leftist city in the most far-leftist state of the country. It's not like she lived in some backwater rural town in the Deep South or something. She made several TikTok videos about her harrowing "...

"First Amendment auditing" is a practice done by many people, most often in the United States (and to lesser extent in some other countries), where they simply go to public places or public governmental buildings with a camera to see if their First Amendment right to film in public is respected by officials, police officers, governmental workers, security guards and citizens in general. As you might guess, First Amendment auditors come in all sizes and shapes, and I'm not here referring to physical appearance, but to tactics, behavior and personality. 1) The absolutely best kind of auditor: The one who is always polite and respectful, knows all the relevant laws and statutes and always stays strictly within them, never bothers anybody, never even engages anybody unprompted, never does anything to deliberately or even indirectly provoke anybody, never even speaks to anybody unless spoken to. When engaged by other people, he responds politely and with professionalism, is ne...

For over 20 years now the United Kingdom has been on a self-imposed path of destruction which has only been accelerating at an exponential rate in later years. It is the outright stated goal of the people in power to replace the native population with immigrants, and not just any immigrants but most particularly those that are the least compatible with British culture and values as possible, people who are least likely to integrate and the most likely to cause crime rates to soar and to take over when they gain absolute majority. It's cultural and societal suicide. There are already political parties in the UK, especially the Green Party, who are openly advocating for the destruction of British culture and the entire British national identity. They are carrying flags of foreign nations during their campaigns, and making political campaign videos in foreign languages, and are openly intent in not only bringing in as many illegal immigrants as possible, but to just legalize them and ...

As I wrote in November of last year , Zohran Mamdani, an open socialist, was voted as the mayor of New York thanks to his promises of raising taxes for the rich and offering free services to the public, such as free public transportation. Unsurprisingly, none of that has happened. In fact, it has only gotten worse for the citizens of New York, who are now realizing the error of their ways. I wrote in that previous post how the mayor of one city has no say on the tax levels of the state (in other words, the mayor of one city cannot just raise the taxes of certain people willy-nilly). However, I have to make one correction: There is at least one tax that the city can decide, and that's property tax within the city limits. That's indeed one thing that an individual city and its mayor can decide, because it only affects the people living in that city, not in the entire state. And what do you know, that's exactly what Mamdani has done: Raise property taxes because his government...

The answer is very simple: Recoil. Surely you are familiar with the concept of recoil? The most famous example of this is, of course, with firearms: When you shoot one, you get a "kick": The firearm experiences a strong force back, ie. the opposite direction that the bullet goes to. That's recoil. (The reason why that happens is due to conservation of momentum, but that's not all that important. The important thing is to understand that it happens, and firearms are the perfect most practical example.) And yes, the exact same recoil happens even if the firearm is shot in a vacuum: Put one in a vacuum chamber, suck all the air out, and fire it using some mechanism: It will experience the exact same recoil. It being in air or in vacuum makes no difference. And this happens with everything: Push a friend with great force, and you will be shoved back in the opposite direction by your own push. That's also recoil. If you were floating in a weightless environment (even i...

AI-generated videos are becoming more and more convincing by the month. Where just a year ago they looked absolutely ridiculous, at the moment of writing this blog post they are already reaching that critical point where you can  barely  distinguish that it's AI-generated. In most videos there are still some telltale signs that you can see if you know what to look for, but it's becoming harder and harder. It's without the shadow of a doubt that within the year AI-generated slop will be completely indistinguishable from actual videos. The scary thing is that YouTube is actually  encouraging  this. They want  AI to become a tool for people to use to create videos. Their rationale is that it allows people to easily express their ideas, so that video creation becomes available to everybody, not just the microscopic minority of people who have the talent, knowledge, experience, resources, tools and time to put their ideas in video form. This view, although it might s...