What grinds my gears

When it comes to political stances, all kinds of words and terms are thrown around, and it can get a bit confusing. There is left, right, conservative, liberal, authoritarian, progressive... Two terms in particular are often confused and thought as interchangeable. Namely, "liberal" and "progressive". And both are often considered synonyms with "left-wing" (or "left-leaning".) In other words, if your political stance is left-leaning, you are thus a liberal and a progressive. However, that is not the case. "Liberal" is not a synonym for "left-leaning". Rather, it's the opposite of "authoritarian". It's on an independent axis compared to the left-right categorization. A simplistic but illustrative way of depicting this is with the following "political compass" graph: Depending on your political opinions and stances, you can locate yourself basically anywhere on that two-dimensional graph. W...

So there's this incident where a student, of middle-eastern descent, in a Texas high school made a "homemade" clock, put it into a briefcase, and then got arrested because they thought it was a bomb. When one reads the headlines version of the story, one very easily gets the impression that this is an electronics genius who built an electronic clock from scratch, then went to his school to show it off, and then got arrested mainly because of prejudice and racism (a muslim brings a briefcase with a clock to school, it must be a bomb!) This story got so much attention that even the president of the United States made supporting comments, and this kid was soon offered scholarships to the most prestigious universities of the country. However, when you actually dig deeper, the story is a bit different. Firstly, was calling the police to arrest him overreaction? Definitely. Americans especially, but in increasing amounts westerners in general, are scared shitless of ter...

The rape culture in our society (not the imagined feminist "rape culture", but the actual rape culture ) has now gone to such ridiculous extremes that some colleges are encouraging their students to use a smartphone app to make affirmative consent "contracts" before sex. Yes, we are finally going this far. The feminist fear of "rape" has gone to this extreme. But putting that aside, something particular stands out in that article: But Jasmin Enriquez, 23, who was date-raped as a student at Pennsylvania State University, branded sex contracts ‘pure evil’, saying: ‘They are nothing more than stunts and money-generating schemes which distract from the real issue which is education. We need to educate students of both sexes. Informed consent is an ongoing, shifting process which cannot be encapsulated in a contract. A contract fails to safeguard a woman who might change her mind after signing it.’ Firstly, notice that it doesn't say "person...

There's a recent new meme called "meninism" making the rounds. "Meninism" is a parody of feminism. It is to feminism what "pastafarianism" is to religion. It's not an actual thing; it's a joke, a parody. It's a parody of feminism (kind of like "what if men acted like radical feminists?" thing). It's deliberately over-the-top, and nobody is seriously a "meninist" (any more than anybody is seriously a "pastafarian".) The funniest thing about it is, however, that many feminists do not understand that it's just an over-the-top parody, and believe that it's an actual real thing, an actual movement. They take it seriously, and attack and ridicule it, as if it were a real movement, a real sociopolitical philosophy held by some men. The vast majority of religious people understand that "pastafarianism" and the "Flying Spaghetti Monster" are not a real thing, but just a parody of ...

There is a video making the rounds because of the astonishingly stereotyping, and sometimes even nonsensical, questions being presented: BuzzFeed's " 24 Questions Black People Have For White People ". It has gained some notoriety due to how obnoxious and nonsensical it is. But, I'm a white person, so I suppose these questions are directed to me. So I'll answer: #1: "Why do you always make such horrible decisions in horror movies? It's not cool to split up." WTF? I'm not in a horror movie. And what exactly does this have to do with me being white? This question is absolutely nonsensical. As for fictional characters in horror movies making dumb decisions, it's because of the script. The scriptwriter decided to write them like that. Usually to cause conflict, tension and drama. But what exactly does this have to do with being white? Are you saying that no black fictional character has ever made any "horrible decision" in a ho...

It seems that Europe has finally snapped, and lost completely any kind of sanity and control. According to some estimates, at some border entry points where "refugees" from "Syria" are entering by the thousands, approximately 90% of these people have absolutely no proof that they actually come from Syria. And they are still just let in, without question, without control, and without monitoring. Many of these "refugees" do not act much like actual refugees fleeing from a war, and seeking shelter on a neighboring country. Instead, they act exactly like Muslims like to act in Europe: Rioting, throwing stones, stealing, and raping. If anybody thinks that every single one of these "refugees" actually comes from Syria, he's being just delusional. And this unrestricted mass immigration wave will have lasting repercussions. Most European countries are incapable of sending "refugees" back, because that's "wrong", and wi...

I briefly mentioned in a previous blog post about a man who was sued by feminists for the simple reason that the man had criticized those feminists for their doxxing tactics. I stumbled across a much more detailed description of that story posted by Karen Straughan on a YouTube comment. Because this excellent writing on the case cannot be found anywhere else, and would otherwise be simply buried under the literally billions of other YouTube comments, I decided to quote it here: A feminist in Toronto named Steph Guthrie, who founded a non-profit called Women in Toronto Politics, put out a call on Twitter a year or three ago for artists willing to donate their work to her organization. A man named Gregory Allen Elliot, a father of four and a graphic/web designer, volunteered to provide her with free art work for her campaigns. They connected over Twitter, met up in person, and arranged for Elliot to provide her with some art. Then, BAM! A dude named Ben Spurr, who was incen...

There was a time, starting somewhere in the late 90's, and continuing for over a decade, of operating systems and programs using fancier and fancier looking graphics for GUI elements. This was true in all three major operating systems, and the majority of applications followed suit. However, in later years, for some reason, there has been a trend into the opposite direction. Sometimes to the ridiculous extreme. Consider, for example, the window decorations in Windows 7 vs. those of Windows 10: The change into the opposite direction is just outright ridiculous. It goes so far as to be actually detrimental to usability. Of course every single fancy graphical effect is gone, and symbols have become nothing but one-pixel-wide straight lines, but that's not all. In Windows 10 there is no difference in coloration between the title bar of the active window vs. an inactive window; it's always just pure white. (Applications are supposed to define their own colorations, wh...

Suppose that a semi-wealthy person gets into the habit of helping beggars. These beggars can simply go to that person's home, and get food or even money just like that. Word gets spread around among homeless people about this, and soon enough there's a stream of beggars. This person then decides that he can't keep doing this anymore, because it's taking too much of his money and time, and the beggars are becoming a nuisance to the neighborhood. So he decides to politely ask the beggars to stop coming. A very likely outcome of this is, at the very least, protest. At worst it could even go as far as violence. Even if it's just protest, it's rather inappropriate behavior. It's almost as if when that person started doing charity, and he got known by doing that, now he, somehow, has some kind of duty to keep doing it. If he stops doing it, the beggars will start protesting and even rebelling. If he had never started his charitable work, nobody would care. I...