What grinds my gears

I really can't understand why daylight saving time is still a thing. Study after study after study shows that its economic effect is negative. In other words, DST causes more overall economic losses than benefits, it increases overall electric consumption (which is highly ironic given that the idea with DST is primarily to decrease electric consumption), it affects negatively things like farming, and it has negative health effect on people (which is of course bad in itself, but it also has an economic impact). Yet, no matter how many studies show the negative effects that DST has, the countries with DST still keep doing it. Why? I can't understand it. It would be for everybody's benefit if we got rid of this antiquated and detrimental practice. But no. Year after year the same thing, and not even so much as discussion in the government to have it removed. This insanity needs to stop.

play.com was for years by far the best online shop for video games as well as many other media products (such as movies, accessories, etc.) In most cases you could almost always get the video game you wanted cheaper on play.com than anywhere else. The reason why is because play.com wasn't actually one single shop, but a centralized service for other vendors (mainly in the UK) to sell their products. This creates healthy competition, and you could always compare the prices of various vendors to get the best offer. In addition to that, there was an absolutely marvelous feature to play.com: Free delivery to almost everywhere in Europe. That's right, no additional postal costs of any kind. This was absolutely marvelous and absolutely crucial. When you are a big consumer of games that are on sale, like I am, free delivery is just paradise. In other online shops, especially when buying cheap games, delivery costs can easily double the total price you will be paying. But not so ...

Feminists like to claim that feminism is nothing more than a movement for equality; no more, no less. They often say things like "if you are for equal rights, you are a feminist" (ie. that "feminism" and "promoting equal rights" are completely synonymous and interchangeable). They might ask someone things like: "You are for equal rights, you oppose discrimination and oppression of women, how can you not be a feminist?" But feminism is not only that, no matter what feminists say. They love to repeat that claim like a mantra, but when you listen to the other things they say, you get a rather different picture. Watch this speech by Anita Sarkeesian on a panel named "how to be a feminist". Her speech is just astounding. It's effectively conspiracy theory gospel preaching. She starts by saying, effectively, "I used to be a reasonable person, with reasonable opinions, but then I read these books, saw the light and became con...

One very prevalent recent trend in neo-feminism is a strong push for the notion that boys need to be taught to be more like girls. Of course it's not phrased like that, and the chain of thought is more contrived. Neo-feminism hates masculinity and anything that's typically masculine, and they adulate femininity. Basically everything that's typically masculine is the source of all problems that women and minorities have, and femininity is the ideal perfect state. Of course they won't say that directly (with very few exceptions), but that's exactly what they are quite directly implying. The current neo-feminist discourse is that we should get rid of what they call "toxic masculinity", and we should teach boys to be more like girls. In other words, boys need to be taught to be more open about their emotions. This, in their minds, would eradicate the aggressiveness prevalent in men. The notion underlying all this is another feminist concept: Namely, that...

Color blindness is an affliction that affects more people than we are aware of. It's estimated that between approximately 1 to 2% of men suffer from some sort of color blindness. When you think about it, that's a staggeringly large number. Yet color blindness is almost never taken into account in video games, barring a few (very commendable) exceptions. (Personally I'm not color-blind, but I do fully empathize.) In most games it makes little difference because in them color is not a critical issue. In some cases it can be more of an issue (for example, in a mini-map different types of elements are depicted with symbols with different colors, such as enemies with red arrows and friendlies with green arrows.) In some games, especially some puzzle games, being able to distinguish between colors is completely crucial. As a prominent example,  Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is an absolutely wonderful game (which I have played through three times, even though I very ...

This applies mostly to North America, but to some extent to many other countries as well (especially English-speaking countries). Suppose you hear someone speak but don't see them, and they use the word "nigger" casually. Many people will feel enraged and insulted by proxy, or personally if they are black. Then you look who said it... and see the color of their skin: It was a black person. Suddenly it's ok. Everything is fine; the anger subsides. Martin Luther King Jr said in his most famous speech: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!" Yet you just judged someone by the color of their skin. And you think that's completely ok. This dream has not yet been fulfilled. People are still being judged by the color of their skin. Such an inconsequential thing as skin pigmentation is used to determine ...

When I was young, I hated politics. Of course I didn't know anything at all about politics, nor did I understand anything about it, but I was completely prejudiced against it in a rather childish manner. "Politics" to me, like to most children, was nothing but a bunch of people in business suits talking all day long about dry and boring stuff that went completely over my head, and that seemed completely inconsequential to my life. In a survey at the school I was in, about the subject of possible future careers, I ranked "politician" as the least desirable possible. (If you are curious, I ranked "scientist" as the most desirable. Not that I turned out to be a scientist at the end, unless you consider an MSc in computing science as "a scientist", but I do love science even today.) As I have grown older, I have started to understand politics more. No more is it just a bunch of people in business suits talking dry and boring stuff. Instead, it ...

The police in the United States (or at least many parts of it) being extremely trigger-happy isn't really any news anymore. However, if you dig deeper into it, it's actually quite frightening. The police forces there being a paramilitary organization isn't just a figurative speech or an exaggeration. It's literally true. The police force at many places spends a total of billions of dollars in actual military equipment. And not just guns and vehicles, but the whole shebang. At many places, when the police does an operation, they look like a military group, even wearing camouflage. (There's zero reason for the police to wear military camouflage in the middle of a city, other than to intimidate. Or to boost their own ego, or something.) It oftentimes gets ridiculously extreme. For example the police in the town of Doraville in the state of Georgia has a military-grade assault tank. And that wasn't a metaphor or an exaggeration; they literally have a military...

Universities, especially after the so-called Age of Enlightenment , have always been bastions of academic freedom, discussion and free speech, where discussion about differing points of view has not only been protected but also encouraged, where both professors and students have been free to express their views and to raise issues and create discussion, without the fear of repercussions (like job loss or repression). The principle of academic freedom, of discussion of differing opinions, has been a core tenet of universities, the driving force behind progress and change. For some reason this has been changing in recent years, especially in the United Kingdom and many parts of the United States. Free speech has been replaced with such astonishing concepts as "right to be comfortable" and "no platform policy". These are terms that you would think you could find in some satirical publication like The Onion , but no, they are real. In more and more universities, e...

Let me describe a bit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It could perhaps be considered one of the most competitive and "cut-throat" universities in the world. Admission is extremely tough, and the schooling system is highly meritocratic. This means that if you don't show proficiency in your studies, if you don't advance, then you are kicked out. This university has some of the highest standards in the world. MIT is also one of the most prestigious universities in the world. As of 2014, 81 Nobel laureates, 52 National Medal of Science recipients, 45 Rhodes Scholars, 38 MacArthur Fellows, and 2 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with MIT. MIT has a strong entrepreneurial culture and the aggregated revenues of companies founded by MIT alumni would rank as the eleventh-largest economy in the world. The scientific and technological achievements produced directly within the university itself, not to talk about all such progress made directly by graduates ...