What grinds my gears

When I was something like 5 or 6, my family was visiting my grandmother. My sister (who was an early teenager back then) tried to make a prank on me. She told me that she had hidden something, and gave me hints on how to find it (a bit like your stereotypical "colder, colder, warmer, warmer" thing). In the end, I found what it was: My grandmother's dentures in a glass of water, where my grandmother had put them. My sister acted like I should be really grossed out. I wasn't grossed out. I was puzzled. I didn't really understand why I should be grossed out. Ok, my granma's fake teeth in a glass of water. So what? What's supposed to be so special about it? I suppose now I kinda understand why I could have perhaps been grossed out. I'm still not grossed out by dentures. Why should I be? What's so gross about them, even if they are somebody else's? I suppose I kind of understand why somebody else could be grossed out, but I just am not. I hav...

Recently, half a dozen social media megacorporations banned Alex Jones from their platforms within the same day , with a few more following them after a few days. This wasn't in response to anything particular that he did. It couldn't be more obvious that there was collusion between these corporations. It would be an astronomically low probability that all of them decided to ban him precisely on the same day, independently of each other. It's quite obvious that these independent corporations agreed with each other to ban him. None of the corporations cited anything illegal that he had done as a justification for the bans. Likewise some time ago the director of the Jihad Watch website Robert Spencer (not to be confused with the more famous Richard Spencer, no relation) was banned from Patreon on behest of the credit card company Mastercard, which has also directly denied their services from him, along with other financial corporations. There were no reasons given, and Rob...

Imagine that there was a restaurant with a sign on the window saying "no blacks allowed". And, indeed, the restaurant owner refuses service to black people and demands them to leave the premises if they attempted to enter. When questioned, the restaurant owner states: "I fully support equal rights for all people, and I also fully support anti-discrimination laws, and I'm strongly against racial discrimination. It's just that I don't have to provide service for black people in my private property. Just because I support their rights doesn't mean I have to like them, or provide them any services within my property. This is not away from their rights nor any services. There are literally dozens of other restaurants and shops within a mile radius of here which they can freely use. Me doing this does not stop them from going somewhere else and using their services. It's only racial discrimination if the government does it; it doesn't apply to priva...

For long people have had the notion that the internet is like this uncontrollable wilderness, a lawless wild west and anarchist paradise, where there may be minuscule towns with their own laws, but no over-reaching authority or government that could impose its will on everybody and, for example, punish and censor people for expressing the "wrong" opinions. No single entity can remove something from the internet forever, from every corner of it, from every server. This is true... to an extent. To an increasingly limited extent. To an extent that's becoming narrower and narrower by the day . Yes, sure, no single entity can drive something or someone off the internet... but what happens when the majority of the corporations responsible for running the internet and its multitude of services start colluding to get something or someone censored? The fact is, if you want to publish something on the internet, you need a server that's connected to the internet. Even if y...

I really can't understand why "populism" is supposed to be such a dirty and dreadful word. Apparently, if a political party is "populist", it's a bad thing, and you should never vote for such a party. For some unspecified reason. It's bad because it is. In politics, populism is doing what the people want. If a political party is populist, it's doing (or at the very least promising to do) what people want them to do. If people want something be done, they promise it will be done. If people don't like something, they promise to get rid of it. Why do I fail to see the problem with this? Isn't this exactly what democracy should be about? Electing representatives who do what the people want? To me it sounds like the opposite of populism would be aristocracy and oligarchy (in the disguise of democracy): A small minority ruling class doing things for their own benefit, even if it goes against the will of the people. A small elitistic group of ...

But that could be changed... I don't think I need to comment anything to this. I suppose I could go on and on about how obnoxious this is, and how racist it is (as it's, of course, only a problem when white people do it), and how this is yet another attempt at social engineering for political purposes, but at this point I think anything I could say would just be superfluous. And that study itself? It contains paragraphs that say, for example, "rather than allowing users to search for what they think they want". Ok, I'm not reading any more of that shit. I don't care what the rest of the study says.

I lived in the Canary Islands in my youth. I remember vividly one particular event that happened when I was once walking with a classmate (not really a friend per se, more like an acquaintance). We were walking in front of a small apartment building where a foreigner was living at the moment (I think he was German, or something like that), and had been living for some years. This classmate of mine said that the guy often gives free candy (and no, it wasn't as creepy as it sounds when said like this) and suggested we go ask him. We went to his door, but he was not home. This classmate got angry and kicked the door as hard as he could. Nothing happened to the door, but it was still quite disconcerting, startling and puzzling to me. He was expecting to get free stuff, even though he didn't deserve any, and he threw a temper tantrum when he didn't get what he wanted. And mind you, it's not like we were 7 years old or something. We were something like 14, if I remember c...

From the outside it might often look like the postmodern regressive leftist "intersectional" feminist ideology is a cohesive monolithic group where everybody thinks the same (or, rather, has been indoctrinated into thinking the same), acts the same, and always supports each other, no matter what it is. In reality that's not always true. Schisms and disagreements can and do happen within the ideology, when two contradictory sentiments arise, which affect some of the people in the group. (Sometimes the regressive left does eat itself.) One of the core tenets of modern feminism (or, should I say, postmodern feminism) has become that your gender is whatever you say it is, no questions asked, no ifs, buts or maybes. For example, if you are physically a male, but you claim to be a woman, then you are a woman. Period. No buts. And everybody should respect and accept your claim 100%, without question. (Any doubt or questioning of this is violence, harassment, gaslighting, ...

"Manspreading" is one of the most ridiculous "problems" that modern feminism has ever complained about: Men sitting with their legs spread, to a larger or lesser extent (supposedly taking space away from others eg. in a train). But why do the majority of men instinctively spread their legs when they are sitting? And yes, it's instinct. They don't do it because they are greedy, or assholes, or showing their manliness, or anything like that. Curiously, even men don't know the real reason. They always talk about "muh balls" and whatever, but that's not the reason. (Seriously, just sit with your legs closed. No, you aren't going to crush your balls. You aren't going to hurt yourself.) The actual reason is that men have narrower hips than women. This is a question of stability. Women are much more stable when sitting without having to spread their legs, because they have wider hips. Men sitting with their legs together is a less s...

Nvidia's new flagship video cards is the RTX 20xx series. However, unlike previous generations of cards, these are significantly more expensive, with the enthusiast-level cards (the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti) breaking MSRP records for video cards of this target demographic. We are talking about prices of over 1000 US dollars for the high-end cards (and that's without VAT, which in many countries adds 20% and even more to that price). Needless to say, the reception by the larger public has been so far quite lukewarm, mainly due to the pricing of the cards, and the poor value in relation to the price, in terms of performance. It's yet to be seen how well these cards will sell, but early indications aren't very good. But why are they so expensive? A very easy conclusion one could jump to is that they contain new technology, in the form of raytracing and tensor cores, and new technology is expensive. However, some have presented an alternative hypothesis. In 2017 an...

Imagine that you were to do a bank transfer for some amount of money to a friend, because your friend needs that money, or whatever the reason, and you write a message in the transfer as the reason for it (as is supported by most banking systems). And now imagine that the bank doesn't like what you wrote, and decides to take that money and instead of transferring it to your friend, or even just refusing to do the transfer... they instead take the money and donate it to a charity. Without even notifying you. Or imagine another similar entity, like PayPal, or MoneyGram, doing the same. They don't like what you wrote, and thus they take your money and give it to someone else, rather than the intended recipient. I believe that this would legally be considered theft. The bank, or the company such as PayPal, would be literally robbing your money and giving it to somebody else than the intended recipient, without your knowledge or consent. Well, it appears that YouTube is intend...

I have written in previous blog posts, such as Crimes that appear to be legal in the US if "protesting" , and Criminal negligence by the US police , how it absolutely sickens me how the police in the United States oftentimes directly witness clear crimes being committed in front of their eyes, and they do absolutely nothing to stop it, because the crimes are being committed in the name of "protesting". As I point out in those posts, even people being physically assaulted by a mob of people results in complete inaction by the police, who just watch it doing absolutely nothing to stop it. This is criminal negligence, and these police officers who fail to perform their duties should go to jail. But no. On that same note, when Trump was inaugurated as president, massive riots ensued, with millions of dollars in property damages. Over a hundred people were arrested. (That might sound like a large number, but given how many thousands of people were rioting, that's...

I have witnessed and experienced first-hand, how different it is to work at a university, vs. working in "the real world", the industry out there. And having a lot of work experience at a university can make one ill-prepared to deal with the outside world. Let me explain what I mean. When you work at a university, eg. developing software for a particular project (such as a research project), your "client" is usually a university professor who is extremely well versed in the subject and that particular field of study, and who knows it inside and out, usually much better than you. What this means is that if you receive a complicated task to implement, it's usually this professor him or herself who is the best person to ask for further information and guidance. If there is, for example, a very complicated algorithm you need to implement related to the task in question, this professor is probably able to either directly point out which algorithm should be used, ...

When it comes to video games and gamers, one of the major narratives by the regressive left is that gamers hate women, and don't want women depicted in video games (unless they are NPCs that can be abused in some manner), and so on and so forth. They keep repeating this factoid like a mantra. Yet, they have very little evidence of this. They willingly completely ignore the fact that some of the most renowned and beloved video game protagonists are female (such as Lara Croft and Chell). Many of the highest-rated and best-selling games have females as playable characters, side characters, or both. Whenever, for example, a new installment of the Tomb Raider game series is announced, you don't see many complaints about yet another game with a chick. On the contrary, these games tend to be very popular and anticipated. Nobody complained when Alien: Isolation starred the character of Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley (from the movie series). It's one of the best-rat...

As you may know, what ended up being referred to with the name "Gamergate" was a massive online consumer revolt, mostly consisting of gamers who were sick of political correctness in video games and, especially, in video game journalism, identity politics forcefully shoved into their hobby and their faces, and the ever increasing trend of attacking, defaming and belittling gamers as a demographic. The movement also became a big protest against corruption in gaming journalism. (This corruption included things like collusion between journalists, accepting bribes and favoritism from publishers in exchange of good reviews and visibility, among other things.) It appears that if there's one thing that journalists cannot stand, it's criticism against them, their profession, and how they are doing their job. They feel attacked, and if the attack is strong enough, they get extraordinarily defensive and turn it into an unrelenting offensive. If the journalist is also a social...

Watching yet another one of the myriads and myriads of videos out there about "antifa" and the totalitarian left acting like retards in the United States, something one of them said suddenly made me realize something. It may seem like a relatively obvious thing, and something I should have realized sooner, but somehow I just didn't think of it before nor paid much attention to it. These people genuinely believe that they are fighting against actual real "Nazis". They aren't using that word as a generic insult, or as a metaphor (as you would use the word eg. in milder expressions like "grammar nazi"). They aren't using the word figuratively, or as a dehumanizing insult to denigrate their opposition. No, most of them really believe that the United States is full of actual bona fide Nazis, exactly like in Germany in the 1930's. Real Nazis, or neo-Nazis, who embrace Hitler's ideology and teachings, and in secret use all the same symbolog...

Sadly, it appears that in some cases the answer is "no". With this I don't mean that the peer review process itself is flawed, but that the process is not being applied rigorously enough, before drawing conclusions (and, for example, making sociopolitical and legal decisions). Science is supposed to be reliable, and one of the main reasons for this is the peer review process: No claim or conclusion is accepted unless it has gone through the rigorous test of scientific peer review, where numerous independent parties verify that the scientific paper in question does not contain flaws, errors, omissions or wrong conclusions using wrong logic, and that any experiments and results are repeatable, and have been repeated numerous times. Unfortunately, sometimes this process is skipped, especially when there are sociopolitical forces and ideologies pushing for a certain idea or agenda, and very flawed papers are too often taken too seriously, ignoring their flaws. Moreover...

Many a work of fiction of the cyberpunk genre envisions a dystopian future where megacorporations run everything, and are stronger than governments, and might even be the government (if not de jure , at least de facto ), with their own police and paramilitary forces, warring against each other, and oppressing the population. Almost invariably the main motivation of these megacorporations is the one that drives them in actual life: Power and profit. Money. Self-interest. A monopoly status. Absolute market share. Have all the population depending on the corporation, and spending all of their money on the products and services of the corporation. Control every single aspect of society and life, for absolute and ultimate profit. In a way, the modern world seems to indeed be heading into this kind of future. However, not in the manner envisioned by these works of fiction. Megacorporations are indeed becoming ever more tyrannical and authoritarian... but not for their own self-interest a...

Male feminists tend to spout things like "I have male privilege because I can walk on the street without the fear of being assaulted". This is actually an extremely common misconception. Statistics show that men are much more likely to be assaulted by strangers than women. Yet the exact opposite is a very pervasive and entrenched belief in our society. Ask almost anybody, no matter who it is, and that person is probably going to believe that women are much more likely to be assaulted. (As I have commented in past blog posts, I believe this misconception is a result of our society caring more about women than men: We tend to pay more attention to, and get more outraged about, violence against women, and tend to shrug off and ignore violence against men, and thus we get the false impression that violence against women happens more often.) What those male feminists say actually got me thinking that their feminism is giving them a false sense of security and safety. They fu...

It's actually hard to believe that a mere 5-or-so years ago people saying "all white people are racist, every single one of them" were a completely fringe minority of nobodies, generally considered as zealots and lunatics, and dismissed as such... while in this day and age we have major news corporations writing articles and creating videos with people openly, directly and blatantly saying things like "white people are the most destructive force in the world" (yes, exact quote, told in complete seriousness), and all kinds of things that amount to "all white people are racist, even if they don't think they are" (as well as, of course, " only white people can be racist", and "white people cannot be the victims of racism.") Consider, for example, this recent video: " Debunking The Most Common Myths White People Tell About Race ". Is the author of the video some random nobody on the internet? Nope. It's NBC News, ...

School shootings seem to be really common in the United States in particular. Since 2015 to the time of writing this, there have been 82 school shootings in that country. 36 of them during 2018 alone. Most of them have resulted in no fatalities, or just one or two. However, there have been several much deadlier ones. In contrast, only three school shootings have happened in Europe between 2015 and 2018, one per year, resulting in only one fatality in total. (Interestingly, only one of those instances involved firearms. One of them was perpetrated with a crossbow, which still counts as a "school shooting" in statistics. The other was perpetrated with a gas-operated pistol, and resulted in no fatalities, only bruises. Also still counted as a "school shooting" in statistics, though.) The United States is indeed the "school shooting capital" of the world, with an amount of shootings that exceeds the entirety of the rest of the world by a country mile, typi...

"Refugees welcome" is the current narrative in leftist politics. All those poor innocent people in war-torn countries, whose homes are being bombed and destroyed, who are being persecuted and killed by war, should have a safe home here in Europe! They are suffering and dying, and we have to help them! Except that's not what the leftists are actually doing. Leftists do not really care about refugees. How come? There's only a limited amount of people that even rich European countries can take. It should be rather clear that if a country were to suddenly take a billion people, it would simply collapse economically. A country of some tens of millions of people simply cannot support a billion immigrants. That's a physical impossibility. Thus there has to be an upper limit, and the amount of immigration must be slowed down, so that the immigrants have time to integrate and support themselves before new immigrants are taking in. Since there's only a limited cap...