What grinds my gears

Trump banned entry to the United States from seven countries. This of course pissed off regressive leftists who seem to think that free travel to the United States is some kind of basic human right. Whether you agree with the ban or not, let's make some things clear about international politics. Firstly, a question: Do you have the right to enter another sovereign state, which you don't have an official citizenship of? Answer: Absolutely not! Being able to enter another country is a privilege that said country might grant you, but it's not a right . I'm sorry, but that's just how international politics work. Whining about being banned from entering a country, as if you had some kind of international human right to do so, is just outright stupid. No, you don't have any right to enter another sovereign state if you are not a citizen. You might be granted permission to do so by said country, but that's not a right. If that country denies you entry, th...

A somewhat lesser known (in the west) phenomenon that's quite prevalent in many parts of eastern Asia is that lighter/paler skin is often considered more beautiful and desirable than darker skin. In some countries, like Thailand, this is so prevalent that a skin-whitening industry has formed there, selling all kinds of lotions and pills to whiten one's skin. The ads of these companies may often appear to be incredibly "racist" to the modern politically correct sensibilities of westerners (even to some who aren't regressive leftist social justice warriors.) Some ads may even feature a relatively pale-skinned person in "blackface". Some such ads have caused quite a lot of controversy in the west. But is this racism, or caused by racism? No. What most people forget, or don't know, is that in the Victorian and pre-Victorian eras, mostly in Europe, a tanned complexion was often taken as a sign that you were a poor peasant, while a pale skin was take...

One common trait of radical authoritarian ideologies is that they will take words with rather specific meanings, dilute them until they pretty much lose all of their original meaning, and just use it as a generic insult, to try to discredit and offend anybody who has a differing opinion. "Racism" would be your quintessential example (as well as "sexism", "misogyny" and "islamophobia".) One such example is also "fascism". That word used to have a rather specific meaning in the past, referring to a particular authoritarian nationalist political ideology prevalent in some European countries between the world wars, and some time after. But like with all those other words, nowadays this one is also used just as a generic insult against basically anybody who has a differing political opinion. For example, during both elections of Barack Obama, he was accused of "fascism" by republican protesters. And, of course, during Trump...

There seems to exist a lot of misconceptions about the PS4 Pro in regards to whether it supports "true" 4k resolution or not. I think Sony is to blame for not making it clear in their promotional material. You see, there seems to be this really prevalent notion that the PS4 Pro does not support rendering to 4k (ie. 3840x2160 pixels) at all. That it instead always renders to some lower resolution (like 1440p) and upscales it for the 4k display. This misconception is so prevalent that when I have corrected it eg. in some YouTube comments, people have directly told me that I'm wrong, that the PS4 Pro does not support 4k resolution rendering and it will always upscale. But that's not true. It is true (and probably the cause of confusion) that the PS4 Pro will render existing PS4 games at a lower resolution and upscale them, by default. However, new and patched games can, if they so wish, support native 4k directly, with no upscaling. In other words, they will rende...

I think this comic exemplifies perfectly one of the most fundamental core problems with the modern regressive feminist ideology. In fact, it exemplifies a couple of them. Firstly, there's the patronizing and mocking attitude. This is really, really common in the regressive feminist rhetoric: Mocking their critics. They have this holier-than-thou attitude and look down their noses at the critics, and mock and ridicule them. In one occasion, someone posted to Facebook a link to a Finnish newspaper article (written by a female journalist) that was moderately critical of the current politically correct regressive ideology, and how it caused, in part, for Donald Trump to be elected president. I responded to that post by giving actual examples of how far the regressive ideology has gone, such as the BBC engaging in racial discrimination , and psychological abuse of children . A full-on regressive feminist activist responded to my post. Can you guess what was the very first thing...

A half year ago I looked what VR games look like . Has the situation improved in this time? And, once again, I'm not pick&choosing the worst examples. I'm examining indiscriminately the top-rated VR games on Steam, in order, using their promotional screenshots. A few of the same games appear in the list again, so I'm going to skip those, and only presenting the new ones. Waltz of the Wizard Looks decent enough. Not much to complain. Maybe not Crysis 3, but compared to the average it might just as well be. Rec Room Looks like barely PlayStation 2 level graphics. Google Earth VR This may look quite nice as a thumbnail, but if you look at the full-sized version, it's actually much more simplistic than it appears (it has a quite low polygon count). But looks decent enough, I suppose. Accounting Again barely PS2-level graphics. Looks like garbage. I could expect a DOS game to look something like this. Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand...

Because the Nintendo Wii was quite less powerful than its two competitors (ie. the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3), yet outsold them by quite a wide margin, branding itself as the ubiquitous "casual gamer console" and "family console", many people today (especially younger ones) have got this impression that Nintendo has always been about content rather than technical specs, and that they have never cared about the latter, and that their consoles have always been "weaker" than the competition. This is actually completely false. In fact, the Wii was the first Nintendo console that was significantly less powerful than the competition. Moreover, in all previous console generations Nintendo has always been about boasting about technical specs, and trying to out-perform the competition on that front. This, somehow, is actually somewhat surprising to these people. (And, on a meta level, the fact that it's surprising to some people is in itself surprisin...

The Games Done Quick marathons started in 2010, and were quite small, the first one raising a mere 10 thousand dollars (of course back then, when it was the first such event organized by SDA, that was a quite sizeable amount of money, but it's a very small sum compared to later editions.) In fact, the Summer Games Done Quick events were so small that the two first ones were held at someone's home (and raised 21 and 46 thousand dollars). The event has seen a really enormous growth. Since 2014 each event has consistently raised over a million dollars per event, the record being over 2 million dollars in January of 2017. But as the saying goes, with great income comes great bureaucracy. (Ok, I made that "saying" up.) The first marathons were made by nerds (mostly) for nerds. Sure, somewhat also for the greater public, but mostly for other gamers and nerds. They were fun. There weren't many rules and pretty much everything was allowed. However, since the GDQ ...

"Millenials" is a colloquial term used to refer to the generation of people born in the 90's and early 2000's, who are now teenagers and young adults. Many people have noticed common traits, and problems, that are quite prevalent with this generation, and are worrying that this is not a good trend. Many causes for these problems have been hypothesized. One problem that seems to be becoming more and more prevalent, especially at poorer households, is the lack of a father. More and more people are growing in single-parent households, the vast majority of them with their mother. Some statistics (although I don't have links to them right now) show a really worrying trend correlated to fatherless homes. If my memory serves me right, significantly more than 50% of convicted criminals eg. in the United States grew in fatherless homes. When we look at those of a poor background, the percentage goes even higher. Many have commented on the problem of fatherless home...

Students At Top University Want To Ban White Philosophers . Students at one of Europe’s top universities are calling for philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, Immanuel Kant and Bertrand Russell to be dropped from the curriculum because they are white. Yes, the sole criterion on which it should be decided whether the works of a philosopher should be taught is the skin color of said person. It doesn't matter what that person wrote, and how influential he might have been. The only thing that matters is his skin color. If the skin color is wrong, then his work should be banned. Although, to be fair, those students, the magnanimous philanthropist they are, are ready to give a small concession: It goes on to say that white philosophers should be studied only “if required”, – and even in those circumstances their work should be taught only from “a critical standpoint”. Yes. White philosophers can in exceptional circumstances be studied. But only if everything they wrote is ...

I recently bought Titanfall 2 for the PS4. The game looks great (especially on a 4k display) and the single player campaign is really good. I really enjoyed it. The game, however, is more known for its online multiplayer mode (especially because the first game was multiplayer-only). So after the single-player campaign I decided to give it a try. I don't really like online multiplayer games, especially the arena-shooter style ones. I find them boring, tedious, pointless and absolutely horrible in terms of balance. Most often they don't have any sort of story, no progression, no goal, nothing to achieve. They consist mostly of just running around the same level over and over, shooting everybody. And of course everybody else is a hundred times better than me at it, so I never have a chance. I don't play online multiplayer games, I only play single-player campaigns, so I don't really have the experience. But I decided to give this one a try. Because why not? The game...

If you are a man, you should never, ever date a modern feminist woman. It doesn't matter if you are pro feminism (either classical or the current regressive version), against modern feminism, completely neutral, or anywhere in between, dating a modern feminist is a really bad idea, because it's a gamble that could ruin your life. I'm completely serious here. This is not a joke. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is not "MRA talk" or "MGTOW talk". This is serious. As said, even if you are yourself a 100% modern feminist social justice activist, you should still never date a feminist, because you are gambling with your life. The reason for this is that modern regressive feminism considers the word of a woman to be gospel. If she says she was raped, then to social justice warriors that's 100% truth. The woman can withdraw "consent" whenever she wants, for whatever reason she wants, no questions asked. And that "whenever" reall...

"Safe spaces" are this invention by modern regressive leftist social justice warriors that might have some good intentions behind it, but are in fact more detrimental than useful in practice, even to those who they are intended for. Not to talk about them being outright illegal in many cases, because they engage in gender and racial segregation. Even if we ignore the legality question, they are still detrimental to everybody involved, even those who they supposedly benefit. Social justice warriors will argue that "safe spaces" are courtesy to those who have suffered some trauma and may be "triggered" by some event, and thus can avoid getting depression or panic attacks. In reality, at least 99% of people who take advantage of these "safe spaces" have never experienced any kind of traumatic event, abuse, or even hardship, in their lives. They are mostly spoiled rich university student kids who have been brainwashed by this regressive leftis...