What grinds my gears

One of the strangest excuses that the social justice ideology presents for forced diversity and hiring quotas in workplaces is that diverse people (which in their language means "non-white, non-male") somehow gives new perspectives, a diversity of ideas, into the work that's being done. With some professions and some entities this might in some cases make some sense. If a corporation or institution is offering some kind of service to the wider public, or representing different cultures in some manner, for instance, then there might be some merit to the idea. A museum, for instance, which specializes in representing human history and the different cultures around the world, would indeed benefit from scholars who are specialized in whatever culture the museum wants to showcase. A scholar who has been born, raised, and become an academic within the culture itself would most often be the best fit for this, especially if his field of study is that culture in particular. (I...

Just a couple of months ago I predicted how anything that refers to white and black colors will in increasing manner be seen as "racist". Well, this isn't a prediction as much as a mere observation of current events. Let's take the latest incident, for example: The kicker is that in this case "lighter" isn't even referring to any color (such as the color of the beer). It's referring to the beer having less calories. Words are being banned even if they are just homonyms of color words, even if the meaning in context has absolutely nothing to do with color. In a sense, that's even more twisted than I predicted. Although not surprising.

(NOTE: This article is talking about an update that Sony made to the original PSVR. It is not talking about the newer PSVR2, which is a completely different device.)   I have written previously about the problem with PSVR, the PS4 Pro, and HDMI 2.0 . I have also written details about the differences between HDMI 1.4 and HDMI 2.0 in my splitter/switcher purchasing guide . To summarize: HDMI 1.4 only supports 4k resolution in full RGB mode at 30 Hz, and does not support HDR. HDMI 2.0 supports 4k resolution in full RGB mode at 60 Hz, and supports HDR. The PS4 Pro supports 4k@60Hz through HDMI 1.4, but only in YUV420 mode, which has reduced color information. The original PSVR processing unit, which sits between the PS4 and the display, has only HDMI 1.4 support, which is a problem with the PS4 Pro and a 4k display. This means that the PS4 Pro will only be able to use YUV420 (rather than RGB), and will not support HDR. Once you understand these differences, the distinction is qu...

One thing that's characteristic of totalitarian regimes, be they fascist, communist, or whatever, is that the oppression and totalitarian control always comes from the government, which has an iron grip on all aspects of society. There is no freedom of the press because the government tightly controls all media, and quickly and severely punishes any media corporation or individual reporter who steps out of the line and publishes something that goes against the narrative of the regime. The press is forced by the government to engage in a constant propaganda campaign for the regime, and against all opponents and criticism. The press has no choice but to engage in this propaganda. All corporations and companies, such as manufacturing corporations, or corporations offering some kind of public service, are likewise tightly controlled by the government, and likewise quickly punished if they step out of the line. The government controls and owns everything, and allows no dissent. Like...

One criticism presented against the so-called third-wave feminism (which has become essentially completely synonymous with multiculturalist social justice ideology) is its lacks of clear, unambiguous and consistent goals (unlike the so-called first-wave and second-wave feminism movements of the past.) The modern social justice feminist movement seems to be a hotchpotch of a myriad different ideologies, goals and opinions, sometimes even contradictory ones, in a confusing mess. I have to disagree with that. There is one clear goal of the modern social justice feminist ideology: Gaining absolute power and control over society. If you think about the things that social justice warriors advocate and demand, in the end they are all about controlling people: Controlling people's behavior, controlling people's thoughts, controlling people's actions, and overall controlling peoples lives. In other words, controlling all of society. Having ultimate power over it. Notice how th...

The UFO craze is seeing a somewhat minor resurgence recently (nowhere even near as large as it was from the 50's to about the 70's, but still somewhat). So it's once again time to discuss a few things about it. One common phenomenon among UFO believers is the over-reliance on eyewitness testimony. The eyewitness testimony of random people, no matter how numerous, can be discarded outright. It's 100% unreliable. However, I would like to discuss a different form of eyewitness testimony, which both UFO believers and casual people put enormous amounts of trust into, even though they really shouldn't: That of combat fighter pilots. Also government officials. We tend to believe that fighter pilots are extremely reliable eyewitnesses when it comes to this subject. Random people on the street? Nah. But a combat pilot! Now that's somebody who knows what he's talking about! That's somebody to listen to and take seriously. After all, this is a highly, highly ...

A Scottish comedian was convicted recently for making a YouTube video about a pug making a nazi salute. The crime in question is, officially, being "grossly offensive". Which, yes, is a crime in the United Kingdom. Officially; stated in law. It's not hyperbole. Not even making that up. This has caused quite a stir and furor, for being such an affront to free speech rights. However, as many people have pointed out, people seem to be unaware that the United Kingdom is actually not a constitutional democracy. There is no such a thing as "the Constitution of the United Kingdom". That country has no constitution. Its citizens have no constitutional rights. Freedom of speech is in no way guaranteed in the United Kingdom, in the same way it's (at least to some level) guaranteed in actual constitutional countries. Once again, this is not just hyperbole or exaggeration. For instance, the Metropolitan Police of London has some amazingly draconian, and outright ...

In the 2017 French presidential election there were two major presidential candidates. Somewhat curiously, these opposing candidates were quite similar to the two major candidates in the 2016 American presidential election. Except, perhaps in some way ironically, with the genders reversed. Marine Le Pen is a quite conservative politician who rallied for tighter immigration policies and a much more critical attitude towards the European Union. In other words, she holds political views that are commonly described as "right-wing" (even though in my opinion they are more centrist in nature; but in the current overwhelmingly left-leaning sociopolitical climate everything that's not extreme left is "right-wing".) Emmanuel Macron, on the other hand, is an extremist leftist (perhaps only surpassed on this front by that circus clown that somehow got to be Canada's prime minister). Open borders even more, expansion of the powers of the European Union, the whole sh...

Suppose a group of people advocated for countries where there are only white people, with completely closed and tightly secured borders, where almost no foreigner is allowed to enter. A group of people that advocates for racial purity, for a country run by white people, for white people, and composed almost solely of white people, where all the top leadership positions are held by white people, where white culture is held in high regard, and where only relationships between white people are tolerated. In other words, extreme ethnonationalism. There are, in fact, such groups of people. And they are universally hated, vilified, demonized and attacked, by pretty much all sides (perhaps slightly less on the right-wing side of the political spectrum, but there is plenty of criticism on that side as well). But what happens if there's a group of people that pretty much advocates for those exact same things, but for black people? Black-only countries, where everything is run by black p...

I'm not referring to the game being the best VR experience, being the most immersive, having the deepest "wow!" factor, making you glad you have a VR headset, and having tons of fun with it, or having the best game mechanics, or being really enjoyable to play. I mean, it can arguably be said to be all that, and more, and it really is up there with the best of the best (easily on the top 10 list of all VR games, perhaps even top 5, no matter how you choose to measure it), but that's not the actual reason why I think it's the best VR game so far. I think Resident Evil 7 is the best VR game so far because it dispels many notions that many people had, and to a large extent still have, about VR games. It dares to go against common notions (especially those promoted by Valve) about how VR games should be, and how they should be made. For starters, it showcases beautifully that "regular" games and VR games can mix (unlike so many people were so adamant to ...

This. Just... this.

There's a really mind-boggling practice in many parts of the United States with regards to postal services and package delivery: The delivery truck will bring a package to a home, and if there's nobody home, the delivery person simply leaves the package at the front porch . Yes, for anybody to steal. In fact, from what I have seen in some videos, many times the delivery guy doesn't even try to see if there's anybody home, and simply leaves the package at the front porch without checking. Just for somebody to come and steal it. And this is a real epidemic in many parts of the United States. This is completely incomprehensible to me. To me this sounds like it should be outright and blatantly illegal . This is the postal office, or delivery service, engaging in criminal neglect when it comes to other people's private property. You can't just be tasked to deliver someone's property and then simply leave it in the open, unattended, for anybody to steal. Or at ...

We live in rather unprecedented and previously-unseen times in human history. And not in a positive way. It is my understanding that this is, most probably, the first time in the entire history of humanity where entire nations hate themselves, their own country, their own people, and their own culture, so much that they willingly and deliberately want to shun, diminish, smother and outright destroy them, and actively replace them with people and culture from distant foreign lands. This is probably unprecedented in human history. I'm not aware of any nation in the past that has done this, or gone through a period of this. There might have been some rare individual cases, but so far I have not found any examples. Of course there have always been individual people, sometimes even influential ones, who have hated their own country and their own culture. However, these have never succeeded in swaying the opinion of the ruling elite to such an extent as to make them actively try to...

Obesity is a pandemic in the first world. Rich welfare countries where living standards are high have the unfortunate side-effect that said living standards offer people copious amounts of cheap food, and do not force people, or even give them incentives, to exercise. People tend to live extremely sedentary lives where they exercise way too little and eat way too much. This is a problem in most first world countries, even in ones that are not exactly famous for morbid obesity. Just observe people you pass by on the street, and notice how many of them are overweight, even obese. The percentage is actually a bit shocking, when you really start looking. Obesity greatly increases the risks of many diseases, and can greatly decrease life expectancy. Type 2 diabetes is almost assured with obesity (the more obese someone is, the more likely they have or will develop diabetes relatively soon), and diabetes all in itself has all kinds of nasty consequences. Obesity also greatly increases the ...

Especially nowadays that the bitcoin mining craze has driven graphics card prices through the roof, at least in some countries, many people are desperate to upgrade their gaming PC for a reasonable price, rather than having to pay exorbitant prices inflated by supply and demand. Many of these people may be lured to search on eBay, to see if somebody is perhaps selling such cards for cheap. You should be very careful with this. If a price for a graphics card on eBay seems too good to be true, then it's most probably so. Especially if the card is advertised as new (but also many times even if it's sold as used). China in particular, and by large, although this is not solely restricted to them, is notorious for scamming people with fake products, and this includes fake graphics cards. In this case it's not that you buy a graphics card and you receive a brick. You will get a graphics cards, and it will actually work... but it won't be the one you thought you were buyi...

Ireland has a population of 4.7 million people. Almost 800 thousand of them are estimated to be living below the poverty line . Unemployment rate is about 15% (even though the Irish government has prettified that number to 6%). There are over 9000 homeless people . What is the plan of the Irish government to fix these problems? Use 116 billion euros to bring one million immigrants into the country over the next two decades. You know, because doing that has been so successful in Sweden and Germany. Moreover, the government has actually pressured the Irish media to paint this project in a positive light. In other words, organized a mass propaganda campaign. One has to wonder why. What possible good is this going to do? And who is all that money away from? The only rational reason I can think of is that it's a sickness of the mind. The amazingly virulent regressive leftist ideology.

I have over the years participated in many kinds of tabletop gaming groups. Not only is playing those games fun, of course, but the social interaction with people is, perhaps, even more important. It's nice to have conversations and social interactions with a group of friends. However, there is one sort of person that ruins that second aspect. And I don't mean that they are somehow obnoxious, or malicious, or behave in a reproachable manner (such as saying improper things, trying to cheat or take advantage in the game, or anything like that). They are often good people, with no ill intention of any kind, who participate in the group in earnest, because they like the game and the people. However, they have one personality trait that basically ruins the social interaction aspect of such a gaming group. And it's that they seem to have some kind of pathological need to be always speaking, even if it means constantly interrupting others. Having a nice light group conversatio...

Many years ago Apple had a size limit for iOS applications. That limit was 50 megabytes. (Applications could download more data on their own after installation, but the size of the application itself was limited to 50MB.) This sometimes posed interesting challenges. One game which I was developing had, by necessity, so many graphics that its spritesheets for the iPad took almost 150 megabytes as PNG files, even after running aggressive PNG size optimizers on them. Of course this was way over the limit because of the graphics alone (not to talk about the approximately 10-15 megabytes of sounds, plus whatever the executable binary and other data files took.) As mentioned above, one possible solution would have been to have the game download graphics from a server after installation. But I decided to go another route: How about using a more efficient image format than PNG? Lossy compression was not out of the question, but the image format needed to support an alpha channel, which e...

One common trick that conspiracy theorists (and creationists) use to convince people is deception in the form of what essentially constitutes lying by omission, or implicitly giving a logical-sounding but false impression of something, and then showing that something to be wrong. Sometimes it might be deliberate, sometimes it might be that the conspiracy theorist himself is confused about that thing and doesn't understand it properly. As a fictitious example (I have never seen this being used, but it could well be), consider this: The notion that galaxies are receding from us, and that the farther a galaxy is from us, the faster it's receding from us, is based on measuring the red-shift of the light arriving from that galaxy to us: The more red-shifted the galaxy is, the faster it's moving away from us. But this is a completely incorrect assumption! Hotter stars, and thus on average hotter galaxies, emit bluer light, while cooler stars, and thus on average cooler galaxi...

One characteristic of the social justice ideology is that it has been fine-tuned, polished and perfected over the decades to be as virulent and as convincing as possible. Much of this fine-tuning has not necessarily been conscious and intentional, like groups of social justice warriors deliberately brainstorming about what kinds of tactics would be the most effective, but instead it has been a kind of "natural selection" process, where hundreds and hundreds of different small tactics have been tried, and the ones that have been most effective have been retained, and collected into a whole. It uses and abuses all kinds of psychological phenomena, of the type where people are, for some reason, very prone to believe certain claims even if it goes against their personal experience and evidence. When you are aware of these tactics, you may learn to recognize them when they are being used. (Again, it might not be used as a deliberate conscious attempt at spreading misinformatio...