What grinds my gears

There's a scene in the TV series  Better Call Saul  where Mike goes to a group therapy session where the participants have experienced traumatic events, loss of loved ones or other tragedies, and he exposes one of the participants as a pretended, a liar who frequents such sessions and makes up completely fictitious sob stories about a non-existent dead wife. A lot of therapists and people who run these group sessions will attest that such a thing is not just pure fiction, but it does indeed happen in real life, and it happens a lot. In other words, people who go to such sessions and just make up completely invented sob stories, or at the very least greatly embellish what they have experienced (or, perhaps, tell someone else's experience as their own.) I suppose in many, perhaps most, cases this is a form of "Munchausen syndrome". In other words, the person making up fictitious illnesses or tragic events in order to garner attention and sympathy. And what better enviro...

Grand Theft Auto 6 is one of the most anticipated video game sequels of all time (perhaps only second to Half-Life 3, which unfortunately will actually never be made, at least not as originally planned, as has been clearly indicated by Valve.) This is largely because of the astonishing popularity of its predecessor, ie. Grand Theft Auto 5 (which is currently the second best-selling video game of all time, which is pretty remarkable and astonishing, when you think about it.) In fact, it's so anticipated that waiting for it has become an outright popular meme (often of the form "we got (something unusual) before GTA6".) Many people, however, have raised concerns about the possible leftist political messaging and content that the game might contain. These concerns are actually not recent; they get back several years. The concerns have only intensified with the published preview trailers. There are some indications that Rockstar Games, the game studio developing the game (and...

I have written before about absolutely insane laws in the United States that feel  extremely  wrong and unjust. The following two examples of American legal practice are not at that level of total insanity, but they still feel a bit iffy with regards to one's sense of justice. 1) Imagine that you work for a company as an accountant and treasurer, and while doing your job you engage in some shady illegal behavior, embezzling company money, falsifying bookkeeping to try to hide your theft of company money, and so on. This, of course, is very illegal. However, when you get caught, you simply quit your job in that company and... that's it. Nothing happens to you. The company stops pursuing the case and just lets you go free. No consequences. Or imagine that you are a nurse working in a hospital, and while doing your job, you start secretly poisoning patients. Highly illegal activity. But when caught, you just quit your job there and... again, that's it: No consequences. The ho...

Only You (And You Alone) is a famous and very beautiful 1955 song by The Platters. Because of how popular, famous and memorable it is, unsurprisingly it has been used in quite many movies, TV series and video games, such as for example Deadpool&Wolverine, the Fallout TV series and Far Cry 5. And, in at least one sense, that has pretty much ruined the song. If you go to almost any YouTube video for the song (especially the official one), 99% of the comments will be nothing but completely stupid references to those games and movies. One particular example I found particularly sad was a comment made by an elderly widow who wrote a really emotional and touching comment about how her husband would sing the song to her, and how much she misses him. And what do you know, almost every single reply to that beautiful emotional comment is nothing but idiots making stupid references to those movies and video games. It's extremely tactless, inappropriate and infuriating. Here we have a swe...

As I have written before , flat-earthers cognitively live in a strange and bizarre world which is akin to the Bronze Age with modern technology. In other words, even though we have super-advanced technology that can, for example, measure distances to the nanometer accuracy, locate your exact position on Earth to the millimeter accuracy, measure the strength of gravity at any given point to parts-per-million accuracy... we still don't know how far for example Cape Town is from Buenos Aires, much less what's beyond the sky, or how the universe works beyond just a few kilometers up, and all that scientists do, just like the philosophers and religious leaders of the Bronze Age, is make completely wild unjustified guesses about that stuff and, for some unfathomable reason, all the millions of scientists from all around the world, from different countries, cultures, backgrounds and sociopolitical beliefs, believe one unified guesswork belief system with no doubt, no skepticism, no co...

Particularly in certain states of the United States the "trans" ideology has invaded the medical profession so deeply and profoundly, very much including all therapists and psychologists, that it's literally impossible to actually get help if some has some form of "gender dysphoria" and would want some help with it. "Gender dysphoria" is not a complete fabrication and invention of the modern far left. Some forms of it do actually exist as a psychological issue, and this has been documented in medicine for probably at least a century. The most common age bracket of people who suffer from some form of it is teenagers and to some extent young adults. There are many forms of it, but it's actually relatively normal among teenagers sometimes: A teenage girl might have huge self-confidence issues and feel like she is not like the other girls at school, especially the popular and beautiful ones. Because of these insecurities she might be very shy and intro...

The Trump administration has once again recently declassified a bunch of US military documents about "UFOs", and some people are going crazy about it, claiming that it confirms that UFOs are real, they are physics-defying alien spacecraft, and that the military has confirmed their existence. Yet, what does this evidence consist of? A lot of written reports, and blurry footage. That's it. That's all we got. That's all the military got, for all we know. And, indeed, all of the photos and video footage of alleged UFOs always show blurry blobs. It's never sharp in-focus footage showing clear small details. Do you know  why  all the UFO footage is always blurry? Because when the footage is not blurry, when it shows the object in question in sharp intricate detail, it's always very evident what it actually is. That's why. So it's a kind of "natural selection" process: When the footage is sharp, clear, in focus, showing intricate detail, it just...