What grinds my gears

Given how incredibly infested universities (especially in the United States, but increasingly in other countries as well) are with regressive leftist neo-Marxists, it comes as no surprise that more and more of them are actually forcing students not only to toe the line and repeat the neo-Marxist social justice indoctrination, and to never express a differing opinion, but also making more and more indoctrination courses mandatory. More and more of these universities are, essentially, holding university degrees "hostage" from students, if they ever show any sign of dissent, differing thought, "wrongthink", or unwillingness to participate in indoctrination courses. In other words, the professors who have in their power to give passing or failing marks to students on mandatory courses, are withholding them from students who have shown any dissent or criticism of the social justice ideology. It's actually incredible how one single professor has the power to stop...

Question: Are these police officers? The title of this post may have spoiled the answer: No, they aren't police officers. They are private security guards. But it would be quite understandable for anybody, especially a random person on the street, to confuse them for actual police officers. (And these were just three random samples I took from literally hundreds of examples on YouTube.) Some of the uniforms worn by some of these security guards have an uncanny resemblance to an official police uniform. (The one on the left of the picture might be the most prominent and striking example.) Security guards may have some additional rights and authority granted to them by the government when they are acting within the premises of the private property of the company, entity or individual that's hiring them. However, it is my understanding that outside this particular private property they have no additional rights or authority over other people whatsoever. In a public spac...

In many states of the United States, the police cannot force a person to identify himself, or show ID, unless the police officer has reasonable suspicion that the person in question has committed a crime, or is about to commit a crime (in which case the police can either detain or outright arrest that person based on that suspicion of a crime, and demand identification.) If the person in question has not committed a crime, and especially if the police officer cannot name such a crime, in these states the person can lawfully refuse to identify himself or show ID. Finnish law, however, states that if a police officer orders a citizen to show ID (or if not carrying any, identify himself by name and social security number), then said citizen must comply. There's no requirement for the person having committed a crime, or even being suspected of such. Basically, if the police orders you to identify yourself, you have to do it, by law. The same law likewise states that any lawful comm...

A bit prior to the launch of the video game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus , an ad campaign caused a bit of a controversy when it drew clear parallels between the premise of the game, which is an alternate steampunk/dieselpunk history where Nazi Germany won, and invaded the United States, and the current real-life political accusations of the United States being governed by a Nazi-like regime (and conservatives being "Nazis"). This angered quite many people (and not only conservatives) because the creators of the game seemed to be indeed saying, not even so subtly, that they thought that American conservatives, and the current American government, were Nazis (and that this is a game where you can kill them.) Back then I thought that "fuck this game, I'm not going to buy it, just because of that stupid ad." Now, much later, I simply thought that it was a stupid ad. Probably some advertisement company thought they would make a clever political commentary, ta...

I have commented several times in previous blog posts how incredibly biased Wikipedia is with respect to politics. And the bias is pretty much unanimously to the extremist authoritarian regressive left. This bias can be seen in almost any article that's highly politically charged, dealing with a current political subject. Most articles of high-profile critics of extremist leftist politics will be nothing more than character assassination propaganda. These articles often go to great lengths to list all the possible "transgressions" of the person in question, no matter how unproven, exaggerated or out-of-context those claims may be. The same is true for any group of people, or movement, that the regressive left considers an "enemy". At the same time, public personalities and celebrities who are not the target of the regressive left, will have significantly more neutral articles about them. Even when the person in question has done something genuinely reproacha...

One aspect of the so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome is to blame Donald Trump for policies and laws that weren't actually created nor enacted during his administration. The latest, most high-profile case is, of course, blaming Trump for the immigration laws and practices on how to deal with illegal immigrants and their children. Trump is directly and solely blamed for all these laws and practices. The media narrative is that it's completely his idea and his fault. The thing is, Trump, his administration, or even the current government, has done absolutely nothing pertaining these laws and policies. These laws and policies were, in fact, created during the Bill Clinton administration, and carried over to all the presidencies since. In fact, the largest number of illegal immigrants that have been deported from the United States, using these exact policies, laws and practices, happened during the Obama administration. Those detention centers? Those "cages"? ...

"Film criticism is predominantly white. Brie Larson believes that needs to change." Anybody who sees the race of some people, and believes that's a problem that needs to be fixed, something that needs to be changed, is a racist pretty much by definition. Therefore Brie Larson is a racist. I don't think there's anything more I need to comment on that. It's a rather clear-cut case.

I have written previously, how social justice invades and destroys hobbies and communities . The Magic the Gathering community is one perfect example of this. For some years now the community has become more and more toxic. And not the kind of toxic that the social justice warriors are talking about. The kind of toxicity that social justice warriors create. Being one of the more extreme cases of a nerd hobby, this card game naturally attracts mostly a male audience of nerds. That's just how the human psyche works. But, of course, when social justice warriors see a hobby where the majority of people are male, they immediately see a problem. Blog posts, articles and forums posts have been written in increasing amounts about seeming "problems" in the community, because the majority of the players are male (and, even worse, white!) The problem is, of course, that when a social justice warrior sees a hobby that's dominated by males, they immediately jump to the conc...

The Young Turks is a long-time YouTube channel run by a relatively well-funded organization, with relatively high production values, that concentrates on sociopolitical commentary and discussion, usually with regards to what's happening in the United States, but also the world in general. A talk show, essentially, that discusses sociopolitical topics and current events. Years ago I used to watch many of their videos. While they have always been a bit left-leaning, they seldom were overtly and obnoxiously so, and on the contrary seemed to have quite a healthy approach at their sociopolitical commentary, when dealing with stories, in that most of the time they seemed to always see both (or all) sides of the issue, if there were different opinions. If, for example, there were two parties involved in some story, with differing views, The Young Turks would discuss both views and give them consideration, even if one of the sides was more clearly in the wrong. They would nevertheless ex...

Quite many years ago (like over 15 years ago, back when I was using Windows98 and later WindowsXP) I wasn't very keen on installing and running anti-virus software on my Windows system. Sure, it was nice to have at least some such software which I could perhaps run once in a while to check the system, but I didn't want it running constantly in the background, hogging resources for no good reason. Back in the 90's most anti-virus software was of the kind which you just ran when you wanted, and it would scan the system, and then end. It wouldn't be running constantly in the background. I started detesting the trend of anti-virus software installing themselves in the system and starting themselves at system start-up, and constantly running in the background. It felt too intrusive, and too resource-consuming. I never got any virus or malware problem. The classical basic safety measures applied quite well: Avoid browsing questionable websites, never install anything from d...

Some people are really stingy when it comes to buying games, even very cheap ones. Others will buy tons of games, especially if they are on sale, or in huge bundles (which may themselves be on sale), and thus amass hundreds and hundreds of games. I suppose I'm somewhere in the middle of these two extremes: I prefer to buy games that are on sale (especially in the case of triple-A games), and sometimes I'll buy big bundles if they are relatively cheap. I have amassed a somewhat "medium-sized" library of games on Steam. Some people will usually try every single game they purchase immediately, and play a bit of the beginning of each. I suppose that this makes sense from one particular perspective: If for example the game doesn't work, or is otherwise utterly broken (or perhaps it's some kind of asset-flip scam), it can be refunded. Once you have owned the game for over 2 weeks, that option will become unavailable. I don't really like to do that, even thou...

Recently it has been in the news how Italy turned a "rescue" boat away from its shores, without allowing the ship with hundred-or-so migrants to enter the country. The ship then sailed to Spain, where they were allowed to enter. What these news reports seldom point out is that this European "rescue" ship actually broke international laws to do so. According to international maritime laws, any sea rescue operation ought to transport the victims to the closest safe harbor. In this case, according to international agreements, that would have been Tunisia. Instead, the boat sailed all the way to Spain, which was at least ten times farther away. The problem with most of these "rescue" boats operating in the Mediterranean is that they aren't run by some neutral maritime rescue organization. Instead, they are run by politically driven organizations with open borders policies, which want to bring as many immigrants to Europe as possible. This wasn'...

People have coined the term "Trump derangement syndrome" to describe the absolute and total hatred that the leftist media, and leftist public personalities, have against Donald Trump, to the extent that no matter what the situation, no matter what he does, they always hate it. The media will always find fault in it, no matter what it is. Trump could literally read out loud, word for word, verbatim, the United States Constitution and the Universal Human Rights Declaration, and the leftist media, and regressive leftists in general, would find fault in it and attack Trump for it. He could donate a billion dollars to a children's hospital, and the leftist media would condemn him for it and criticize it. It doesn't matter what he does, the regressive left simply cannot acknowledge that it was a good thing. Recently Donald Trump made history by successfully starting peace talks between North and South Korea. For the first time in over 50 years the leaders of both countrie...

I have sometimes been accused of being "alt-right", or "conservative" (or one of the many derogatory terms used to describe them). Othertimes I have been accused of being a "libtard" (as in, a supporter of the American liberalist party, ie. an American democrat), or a "social justice warrior", or one of the many derogatory terms describing the regressive left. One time this happened in the comment section of the exact same YouTube video. The video in question was an excerpt from a news report on immigrant gang violence in Melbourne, Australia, which has gotten completely out of hand (with, for example, shops being raided and looted, homes being invaded, people being mugged on the streets, and so on, by recent immigrants from certain particular African countries.) Needless to say, the comment section was full of (often rather retarded) comments by both sides of the political spectrum. Some defending immigration and spouting the "not all...

I have written previously how Wikipedia is not only mob-controlled (by Wikipedia's own description, it has no central authority, team or organization that manages and vetoes its content, and is instead 100% maintained by random people on the internet), but with most political subjects it's highly biased. Oftentimes it cleverly disguises these biases by citing tons of references to third-party articles and other sources, but this is oftentimes done very selectively, only citing those sources that affirm the narrative being pushed in the article (in other words, there's strong selection bias when it comes to sources). One thing I have noticed, and noted before, is that the lede of the article (ie. the text at the beginning of the article before the table of contents) is often a good indication of how biased the article is. For some reason, it seems, biased editors love to put all of their arguments and claims in the lede (probably to make sure that anybody who just skims ar...

Australia's Channel 9 broadcasted a TV show where an "expert" says, and I quote: "There's unequivocal research about the impact of these sorts of games. There's over a hundred and thirty evidence-based pieces of research to tell us that violent games like this increase aggressiveness, increase angry thoughts, increase aggressive behavior. So we can either choose to dismiss this sort of research, or take it on board as parents and say, this is what the scientific community is telling us. [...] There's over a hundred and sixteen research reports telling us that it affects the structure and performance of the brain as well." This is a complete lie. Those numbers may be based on actual papers, sure, but they aren't research papers, they are not scientific studies. They are opinion pieces written by some researchers. They are papers presenting hypotheses , not papers presenting the result of an actual scientific study performed on actual test su...

A bakery in Portland, Oregon, stops taking new customers at 9 pm, and turns off its "open" sign for this. (Customers who have already ordered a meal before that are allowed to finish their meals before the bakery completely closes, as is normal and customary.) A white woman enters the bakery after this time, and she's told that unfortunately they are closed and they won't be taking any orders. She leaves. Another white women enters the bakery after that, and the same happens. Then, a black woman enters the bakery, and the same happens. This is completely normal procedure, and everybody was treated completely equally. There shouldn't be any problem. But there was a problem. You see, that third woman was a social justice activist, who then proceeded to bully the owners of the bakery, who capitulated and fired the employees . And no, there is no ambiguity in this situation: The owners specifically apologized and mentioned racism as the reason for the firing...

The White Privilege Conference Global is an annual conference organized by the Ryerson University. As you might guess, the topics of this conference include all the anti-white social justice rhetoric you can imagine. It's an entire almost week-long conference dedicated to nothing else than to talk about white people and how horrible they are. One has to really wonder how exactly they think that any of this is going to help anything. What they are doing is teaching black people that they are oppressed, and that all white people are guilty of it, every single one of them, even if they aren't personally oppressing anybody. They aren't teaching "some white people are being racist against black people". What they are teaching is "all white people are guilty; all of them benefit from this system, and you are oppressed by it." What they are teaching is to hate all white people. All of them. Even those who haven't done anything wrong in their entire lives ...

The term "reverse racism" is rather popular among social justice warriors (and goes way back, at least 10 or 20 years, when "social justice"/"intersectional feminism" was more commonly known as "multiculturalism"). The thing is, I don't remember ever seeing or hearing that term used by skeptics, by the anti-SJWs. I don't even remember seeing it used by actual white supremacists and racists (although I haven't seen much material by them, since I'm not exactly interested.) I have ever only seen it used by social justice warriors. Why do social justice warriors love to use that term? Why have they coined it in the first place? I think they like to use that term to distinguish it from their own definition of "racism", to make it a completely separate and independent concept, and thus easier to attack and delegitimize. In their narrative, only white people can be racists, and only non-white people can be victims of ra...

As you might guess, I follow quite many anti-SJW channels on YouTube. Also, as you might guess, a good portion of these people happen to be American (or sometimes Canadian) conservatives. Most aren't, but a good portion are. And I don't mean solely that what they say is mostly in line with conservative values and politics; I mean that they are openly supporters of the Republican Party (ie. they are republicans). Or the equivalent in Canada. One thing I have noticed, and something that quite irks me, is that there seems to be an almost full and tight one-to-one relationship between American conservatism and climate change denialism. If a YouTuber identifies as a conservative and/or directly a Republican, you can bet that if the question of climate change ever comes up in any video, he will have the denialist attitude towards it. I view climate change denialism as essentially no different than flat-Earthism, or as the Moon landing conspiracy theory. It's simply an anti-sc...

If you don't know who Zoe Quinn is, well, congratulations. You have spared quite many brain cells and gray hairs. In short, Zoe Quinn is the other top professional victim who rose to fame by self-imposed victimhood on the wave of Gamergate. The other one being, of course, Anita Sarkeesian. (Their difference, however, is that Sarkeesian succeeded in making her professional victimhood a million-dollar business, while Zoe Quinn has fallen mostly into obscurity and has been less successful in monetizing her self-imposed victim status. Not for the lack of trying, mind you. She simply isn't as good at it as Sarkeesian is. Quinn is not a businesswoman.) Marvel Comics has been for years the more famous of the two top western comics corporations who has openly and very egregiously embraced the social justice ideology (and whose sales have suffered quite a lot as a consequence, because of their obsession in inserting their real-life social justice politics into their comics, and changi...

In a previous blog post I commented how you should be really careful, especially nowadays, when buying a graphics card from eBay . There are tons and tons of scammers, and many of them are really professional about their craft (making their pages and products look very professionally made, like they were big famous corporations, with custom-printed boxes for their graphics cards, and even with custom heatsink shrouds and stickers that look legit, and even sometimes going as far as re-flashing the card's bios to make it look to the operating system as the genuine thing, even though the card is in fact two or three generations older than claimed.) However, eBay scammers do not restrict themselves to just graphics cards. Whatever the computer hardware may be, if it's in any way related to performance or capacity, you should be really careful. USB sticks is another perfect example: If you see very large-capacity USB sticks being sold extremely cheap, you should be suspicious, n...

For years and years I didn't really even know who the YouTuber PewDiePie was. I had, of course, heard that name, and had heard that he's the YouTuber with the largest amount of subscribers ever (which is rather extraordinary given that he is, essentially, just an individual vlogger, rather than some kind of big-budget show, a big media corporation, or the like). However, I had never seen even a single video of his, and knew next to nothing about him or what kind of content he makes. I only had a vague concept that he probably makes let's play videos of games. Then, some time ago, the Wall Street Journal incident happened. All anti-SJW channels were talking about how the Wall Street Journal had written a slanderous hit piece attacking PewDiePie, which caused both Google and Disney to immediately and permanently drop all commercial deals they had with him, probably costing him millions of dollars in revenue. It was speculated, and I believe that with good reason, that thi...

Especially in the United States, but in an increasing manner in other "progressive" countries as well, in an increasing manner, discrimination against white men will become more and more prevalent. For example, the requirements for white men to get promotions and salary raises in many corporations will become stricter and stricter, while those same requirements will become looser and looser for non-white non-male people. The same will be true, obviously, for hiring. In fact, more and more corporations will start openly and quite blatantly discriminating against white males in hiring, some even refusing to hire them at all. (Many of these corporations will probably not last long, but they will still engage in this.) Since this kind of discrimination is still illegal in most countries, lawsuits related to this will become slightly more common, but still not extremely so. That's because corporations always find ways to circumvent such laws. They will hide the reasons for...

Whenever someone asks on some online forum that he would want to learn how to program, or how to learn better programming, almost invariably you will see two kinds of advice given, both of which are absolutely and utterly stupid. I have seen it done over and over, and I will never get tired of heavily objecting to both. The first one is way more common (and applies to pretty much all programming languages), but the second one is also quite common, especially when we are talking about certain particular languages (like C and C++). The first advice is the archetypal "look at the source code of open source projects out there, to see how they are made." This is absolutely stupid advice because it's extremely inefficient, will teach you very little, will take you a lot of effort to understand and learn anything, and may teach you lots of bad habits (such as cargo cult programming). I always use the same analogy to object to that advice: It would be like if someone asked ...

Brand new big-budget triple-A games typically cost something like 60-70 dollars/euros at launch. Oftentimes there are some special editions of the game (often with fancy names like "deluxe edition", "gold edition", or whatever) which cost 10-30 $/€ more. Some of these special versions can cost up to 100 $/€. Then some of these games may come bundled with so-called day-1 DLC's. In other words, downloadable extra content available from the very day of launch. At an extra cost. In the greediest possible examples, if you wanted everything the game has to offer, and are willing to pay for everything, you could end up paying something like 200 $/€. In the absolutely most egregious examples that could go as high as 300, if you purchased absolutely everything that the game has to offer on day 1 (unlimited in-app purchases not counting, of course, because there's no limit on how much you can spend on them). Quite a lot, but I suppose some people are willing to pay...