What grinds my gears

Last year I wrote about how I have become utterly tired of "prank" videos . Not just the mean and stupid ones, but  all  of them. Including those shown in prime time television (eg. "Candid Camera", "Just For Laughs Gags" and so on.) There's a somewhat similar thing I have also gotten completely tired of in later years, and that's all the "thinking outside the box" type problems. In other words, puzzles, problems, riddles and so on, where the solution requires something that's surprising and wasn't apparent from the setup of the problem in question. You know, the kind of problem where the solution involves a sentiment like "nobody said the lines you draw can't go outside the grid" and the myriads of other similar problems. And that sentiment reveals the very reason why I'm so tired of them: They are intentionally designed to be deceptive. For all intents and purposes they lie by omission: The problem is always se...

In the United States, trial by jury, having a jury of regular fellow citizens in criminal cases, is considered one of the most fundamental core aspects of a free constitutional democratic society with a fair justice system. One of the core ideas with it is that justice is not in the hands of a minority elite, ie. those who are in power, but in the hands of the people. It reduces and avoids tyranny and oligarchies, where the elite ruling class judges and sentences citizens. Not all countries have implemented the concept of trial-by-jury of citizens. Instead, in many countries criminal trials are judged by a panel of judges (and, sometimes, other kinds of legal experts). In other words, a panel of highly educated experienced licensed experts with advanced law degrees and years of experience. While trial-by-jury might sound like a good and fair idea on paper, the recent Lindsay Clancy trial has really showed its main problems and drawbacks. Two of the most prominent problems with regular ...

Consider this description of Lysenkoism in Wikipedia: "Lysenkoism was a pseudoscientific political campaign led by the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko against genetics and science-based agriculture in the mid-20th century, rejecting natural selection in favour of a form of Lamarckism, as well as expanding upon the techniques of vernalization and grafting." "More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the Soviet campaign to suppress scientific opponents. The president of the Soviet Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, who had been Lysenko's mentor, but later denounced him, was sent to prison and died there, while Soviet genetics research was effectively destroyed. Research and teaching in the fields of neurophysiology, cell biology, and many other biological disciplines were harmed or banned." Now, does that remind you of anything happening in the modern world? Incidentally, even related to biology...

I once again stumbles across one of those neo-socialist videos where the author compared the net worth of billionaire CEOs with the salaries of entry-level workers who had just been hired into one of the companies of said CEO. About how the CEO is worth such-and-such amount of billions of dollars, while the entry-level worker gets a salary of such-and-such amount of dollars per hour. In this particular video the author was advocating for a "wealth tax". There were several things wrong with that video. The fact that a "wealth tax" of billionaires would do jack squat to the salaries of entry-level workers was just the least of those. (The only thing that a "wealth tax" would do is to increase governmental tax revenue by a small fraction of a percent, all of which would just be wasted on the same things they are wasting that tax money anyway. The entry-level workers would see little to no benefit from it at all.) One of the major problems in the video, someth...

The American "sovereign citizen" ideology is a huge and absolutely insane conspiracy theory which I go into more detail here . A big part of the ideology is their constant use of particular terms and expressions that only they, and people who have researched their ideology, understand. (Quite ironically, no lawmaker, judge, law scholar, law professor, lawyer, law enforcement officer, or any other such person understands that vocabulary either, unless that person has experience with the conspiracy theory itself, even though the sovcits believe they do, secretly behind the scenes.) In fact, you can easily recognize whether someone subscribes to the conspiracy theory or not with how they speak during traffic stops . I have discussed before the reasons why they so often demand a supervisor (particularly during traffic stops), and why they so often use expressions like "I'm a living man" , and why they usually have such a huge problem with stating that they "un...

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...