What grinds my gears

I have a friend who some years ago had to go through a medical procedure that left his mobility impaired. He can only walk with crutches. (Whether he will ever be able to fully walk without them is unclear.) He is also quite overweight, and as you might guess, it would be a great help to his mobility and ability to walk around and do everyday tasks if he were to lose a significant amount of weight and become fit. All those excess kilograms aren't exactly helping his everyday life. He was absolutely decided on losing weight, and become as fit as his physical condition allows him. He prepared himself with the right knowledge for this. In terms of diet and exercise, what works and what doesn't, what's the right kind of food to eat, and how much. How much is too much, and how much is too little. What kind of exercise and diet program are the most efficient and suitable. He acquired a lot of nutritional knowledge, was absolutely prepared and adamant to become healthy, slim and...

In a previous blog post I wrote about a youtuber who used to be quite big. About 6 years ago he made several videos that got over 2 million views, multiple others with over 1 million views, and even the average view count on his other videos during that era was in the 200-300 thousand views per video. Then somewhere around 3 or 4 years ago he experienced a sharp decline, until it was about 20-30 thousand views per video on average, with only a few rare videos breaking the 100k mark. (Trump becoming the President of the United States at that time is not a coincidence.) Out of curiosity I checked his channel now, almost a year later, and it appears that he seems to have trouble even breaking the 10k views mark, only very occasionally achieving that many. The average seems to be in the ballpark of about 8 thousand views. One particular phenomenon that I notice in his latest videos is the sheer amount of 2-hour long podcasts. During a particular recent period of about 5 months he ha...

I have written in past blog posts (such as here and here ) about why I have stopped following and supporting the Games Done Quick marathons because, among several other things, it's quite clearly run by regressive leftist ideologues who are pushing a leftist feminist agenda onto their viewers for social engineering purposes. But what do I base this claim on? How do I know they are run by regressive leftist social justice ideologues? Sure, they impose ridiculously harsh punishments for even the smallest of transgressions, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are SJWs. It may just mean that they are trying to be as corporate-friendly and advertiser-friendly as possible. And sure, they have had time and again that one transvestite as a host and commentator, but maybe they are just open-minded, non-prejudiced, and that person was genuinely the best for that job from all the other candidates. Who am I to say that he was chosen because of identity politics ideology rather than m...

I have written earlier about common misconceptions about free speech that especially the regressive left espouses (out of ignorance or on purpose). That blog post goes into a lot more detail about it, but here's a very quick summary: "Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences": On the contrary, that's exactly what it means. If there are consequences to you from you expressing your opinion, any sort of punishment, then it's not free speech anymore; it's restricted speech. (Receiving criticism is not a "consequence" in this regard. Presenting criticism is itself very much part of the fundamental notion of free speech.) "Hate speech is not free speech": Yes, it is. Whether you find an opinion abhorrent or not has no bearing on whether it's free speech or not. As long as an expression of opinion is not a demonstrable and direct incitement to violence or crime, that directly and demonstrably causes people to commit cri...

I'm not exactly sure when or why, or by whom, this absolutely massive almost world-wide PSA campaign about drinking enough water started, but it has been so successful that probably not a single person alive and conscious hasn't heard the pitch. You have probably heard at least some version of it, I'm sure. People don't drink enough water and get dehydrated. People should drink such and such amount of water every day. If you feel thirsty it's already too late, you are already dehydrated. Yada yada yada. Have you, however, ever stopped to think: "Hmm, ok. But what exactly are the drawbacks and side-effects of this "dehydration" that I don't even notice, which seemingly happens because I don't drink enough water?" Because almost nobody does. If a friend of yours, or somebody, ever tells you about you needing to drink enough water, or about being dehydrated even if you don't notice it, try asking him exactly what the consequences a...

I have been saying for years that social justice warriors and their "allies" (which you should never become , seriously) are extremely naive in that they feel safe in their beliefs, stances and, especially, in the groups they associate with, ie. other social justice warriors. They seem unable to understand the totalitarian vindictiveness of their own side: They think they are on the right side of history and thus safe among their own people, and they don't understand nor want to accept that their own side could turn against them at any moment, for any reason. It takes but one single step away from the (ever-changing) rules of their ideology, one single transgression, and the person may quickly find herself a pariah and the enemy, in the blink of an eye. There is absolutely no safety in that group. It's an absolutely precarious group to belong to. J. K. Rowling has recently got a taste of exactly this. If not an outright regressive leftist social justice warrior, J...

And now for something completely different. For some reason I seem to have this small quirk, maybe a bit of a pet peeve, that I find mildly frustrating to watch videos of people eating. I was reminded of this yesterday, when I was browsing twitch.tv when I stumbled across a channel that looked like an interesting novel idea: It was a guy playing jazz on the piano and playing (online) chess at the same time. I suppose as some kind of mild challenge. Can you concentrate on both things at the same time? I think the stream had been going on for quite a long time, but a bit irritatingly, a mere 20 or 30 seconds after I joined and started watching, he had to get the laundry out of the machine or something (right in the middle of a chess match), so he was away for something like five minutes. When he came back, he took an apple and started eating it (rather than, you know, continue playing the piano) while playing the chess match. Do you know how long he ate that one single apple on s...

Some time ago an acquaintance of mine was saying how Instagram banned pictures depicting people committing self-harm (such as cutting themselves), as well as pictures with "cosmetic surgery" filters (in other words, pictures of people's faces with dotted lines indicating cosmetic surgery locations, or something like that). He expressed approval of both bans. While I'm quite a free speech absolutist, I conceded that it's ok to ban the former. If anything is banned, that particular subject doesn't really rank very high in the outrage scale for being banned. However, I couldn't understand why they banned the latter. What for? What's the reasoning? After wondering why I couldn't understand the reason for the ban, he responded with the archetypal response "if you don't understand it, I'm not going to explain it to you". That genuinely left me completely perplexed. Why not? What exactly would be the problem in explaining it, if I ...

I have written several times how in modern Europe the majority of the countries have Constitutions, but they don't mean anything and are worth nothing, because the judicial system apparently doesn't need to follow any of their rules. I have also commended the United States for actually taking their own Constitution seriously, and actually having it as the highest law of the land, over every other law. (In European countries, in general, the Constitution is not an actual law but, in essence, a soft guiding principle that presents guidelines on what kinds of laws should and shouldn't be passed. In general, there is no such a thing as "breaking the constitution". Such a criminal charge doesn't exist, and nobody can be sued because of that. For example, a judge or a police officer who does something unconstitutional cannot be charged for that, because it's not a "crime" per se. Which is unlike the United States where people, at least officials, ca...

Demolition Man , released in 1993 and starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes, is your archetypal mindless action film of the early 1990's... ...except that it's not as mindless as it might first appear. In fact, besides being a 90's action film, it has quite heavy sociopolitical commentary, a vision of a dystopian future which in the 90's was deemed too ridiculous to ever become even remotely possible... yet has turned out eerily accurate. If you have never seen the film, I highly recommend watching it. Heck, even if you have seen it a long time ago, I recommend re-watching it. Pay close attention to the eerie similarities of the world depicted in the film with the current world, and where it seems to be headed. The similarities are absolutely uncanny. The exact details may not be absolutely exact (which isn't surprising), but they are to an even surprising extent, both in terms of the depicted technology and, more particularly, in terms of the direction ...

Some people have made the comment on the current political climate and the ever-growing raise in power of the regressive left that this is most probably just another passing phase, not dissimilar to similar political movements and raises in power in the past. The history of most countries, including western countries, are littered with attempted revolutions and raises to power, small and large, some with more success and others with less. However, pretty much always after the turmoil has passed things eventually returned to the normal free democratic constitutional forms of government and society. In the worst cases it required perhaps years of reconstruction and economic rebuilding (such as the big wars), and in others the revolutionary movement just faded into obscurity because people stopped being interested and paying attention (such as the hippie movement of the 60's and 70's). But eventually everything returned to normal. Thus, they say, this sociopolitical revolution tha...

In several previous blog posts titled "What happened to (such-and-such)" I have always written about people or entities that used to be very reasonable and have very good and fair opinions, who have then turned into complete zealots and bigots with absolutely idiotic changes in their opinions and attitudes, most usually by contracting Trump Derangement Syndrome and turning into the worst kind of totalitarian regressive leftists. In this case, however, the "conversion" seems to be in the other direction. What once used to be a ridiculously and laughably biased and dishonest entity has become the only voice of reason. Fox News is an American news channel that's notoriously (and rather unusually) conservative and Republican. For decades they were pretty much the laughing stock of both Americans and non-Americans alike (pretty much regardless of one's political opinions, with the exception of ultra-conservative Americans). They were constantly spouting the ...

So finally the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump. Note that being impeached does not mean being removed from office. It simply means that the House of Representatives has effectively decided to "sue", so to speak, Donald Trump, and the "court" that decides whether to convict him or not (ie. remove him from office and impose whatever additional sanctions) is the Senate. In other words, being impeached means that Trump will go "on trial" to the Senate. The Senate will then decide whether to remove him from office or not. (The chances that they will seem quite slim, but that's what the situation currently is). The whole impeachment vote in the House of Representatives was 100% partisan, and essentially just a kangaroo court. Not one single Republican representative voted for impeachment, and every single Democrat representative, with the exception of one, voted in favor of it. Because the Democrats have currently a majority in the House,...

There's a rather curious phenomenon especially in Europe, where the amount of terrorist attacks and rampant violent criminal activity seems to be quite directly correlated to the amount of immigration. If you look at the European countries with the least amount of immigration and the smallest proportion of non-native inhabitants (such as Hungary, Poland or Finland) you'll most usually find the least amount of terrorism and violent crime, while the converse is true for countries with the highest amounts of immigration and proportion of non-native inhabitants (such as Sweden, the UK, France and Germany). Some of the former countries are so peaceful that there hasn't been a single terrorist attack in them for the past 50 years. The same phenomenon also happens locally inside those countries with high immigration: Cities and towns with very low proportions of immigrants tend to be much safer and with significantly lower violent crime rates than cities and towns with high pro...

I have written before about why have I stopped watching, following and supporting the Games Done Quick charity marathons, for several reasons, most prominently because they have since many years ago stopped being the grassroots hobbyist community that they started as, and become completely soulless corporate trash with an iron grip tyrannical zero-tolerance policies that punish and ban participants with harsh punishments for the most minor of infractions (and sometimes even without a shred of proof). It also doesn't exactly help that the events are quite clearly run and supported by regressive leftist ideologues, and that can be seen (both in their presentation, and their rules and enforcement of those rules). Since almost the beginning, one of the most famous, prominent and beloved speedrunners is a guy who goes by the nickname Trihex, who has participated in almost every one of the marathons. He has the distinction of being an almost perfect speedrunner both from the perspecti...

Donald trump is currently in the midst of an absolutely massive witch hunt and political persecution by the American Democratic Party, who are doing everything in their power to have him removed from office, by any means they can. It's rather obvious to anybody, including the Democrats themselves, that they absolutely don't give a flying fuck about any phone calls by Trump, or whatever was said, or whatever was or was not meant by what was said. That particular phone call is just a convenient excuse. They are desperately grasping at straws to find anything they can to pin on Trump to have him impeached, and they absolutely don't care what it is. Collusion with Russia? Quid pro quo with the Ukrainian president? Obstruction of justice? They don't care what it is, as long as they can try to impeach Trump with it. If they could impeach him for eating two scoops of ice cream when the menu said only one, they would absolutely do it. The "crime" itself is comple...

There is a new movie on Netflix named "First temptation of Christ", which is a parody of the life of Jesus, where he's depicted as a homosexual. Satire, even satire of religious figures, falls under the principles of free speech. There are no subjects too sacred for free speech. That's not really the problem. It may be deeply offensive to most Christians, but personal offense, even offense against deeply held religious beliefs, still falls under the protections of free speech. Except... imagine if the movie were about Muhammad instead of Jesus. Depicting Muhammad as a homosexual, and being overall a parody of him. Even disregarding the ensuing death threats and probable terrorist attacks, I'm pretty certain that the reaction by the regressive left would be rather different than with the parody of Jesus. I'm pretty certain that there would be a complete shitstorm about it, and demands for the movie to be banned and removed, and for the creators and publis...

For like the millionth time, YouTube has once again revised their policies and terms of service. It's an endless wild goose chase, because it will never, ever, ever be good enough. Anyway, this part of YouTube's announcement really "triggered" me, if we are allowed to use that term: "We will no longer allow content that maliciously insults someone based on protected attributes such as their race, gender expression, or sexual orientation." As a social liberal (leaning quite heavily on classical liberalism), individualist, and extreme constitutionalist and "free speech absolutist", that term "protected attribute" really grinds my gears. Everybody should be treated equally, as an individual person, not as part of a group. People should be judged solely on their own personal actions, merits, achievements, opinions, and other such actions and abilities. People should not be judged, nor treated differently, based on their innate externa...

There's one form of political maneuvering that's sometimes used by governments that doesn't get paid much attention nor commented on. Suppose that the parliament would want to pass a controversial law that's quite sure to enrage the public and cause a shitstorm (and, perhaps, even endanger the current parliament in the next elections). If parliament would just make the law proposal as-is, the press and the public would certainly take notice, and a huge controversy and protest would ensue. But the parliament really wants that law to be passed. So how to circumvent that little problem? The solution is to "hide" that controversial law proposal under an even more controversial one. Law proposals are seldom short and simple, presenting just one little short law change. They are often very long, with dozens and dozens of points and changes. So the tactic is to deliberately add one that's ten times more controversial than the actual law that they want to...

For some time now I have been contemplating purchasing an RTX card. The thing is... Why should I, really? At the time of writing this there are, in practice, only three games with decent RTX support. I'm not counting Shadow of the Tomb Raider because the only thing where RTX is used in any way, shape or form in that game is for shadows, and nothing else, and they don't really make all that much of a prominent difference. I'm also not counting old games with remade engines that use RTX, such as Quake II or Minecraft . Nor am I counting Final Fantasy XV , because it uses RTX even less prominently than the Tomb Raider game. That leaves in practice only three games, so far, with actual decent RTX support: Battlefield V , which I'm not really interested in (from what I hear it has a short and uninteresting single player campaign, and I'm not interested in multiplayer, and it's an SJW game, so fuck them), Control , which is an Epic Store exclusive game (so fuc...

I'm sorry to make a third post about this one and same subject in such a short time, but the hypocrisy of this guy just irks me to no end. He is one of the biggest "anti-SJW" critics on YouTube, with several channels, the main one of them, TheQuartering, having (at the time of writing this) 626 thousand subscribers, which makes him one of the biggest among that crowd (probably in the top 10, or at least top 20). As I wrote earlier , during the last couple of years he has been on a crusade to have someone banned from YouTube completely. That someone had uploaded in the past highly despicable and disturbing animal abuse videos, which were rather obviously quite criminal and blatantly against YouTube's terms of service, and were quickly removed. TheQuartering went on a campaign to have him reported to the authorities, and he was indeed indicted and (if I understand correctly) is now pending trial in his country. That I have zero problems with, obviously. Criminals ...

Isn't it curious that whenever a white westerner, especially if that person is a "white supremacists" (at least allegedly) or some other kind of "right-wing extremist" (again, at least allegedly), commits an act of terrorism, the mainstream media, politicians and pretty much everybody immediately knows exactly what the motivations behind the terrorist attack was and who or what is to blame, and there will be loud calls for action to destroy that scapegoat? Isn't it also curious that whenever eg. a Muslim commits an act of terrorism, the motivations and causes for it seem to always be a complete mystery? It just kind of happens, for unknown reasons. Suddenly all those politicians, journalists and everybody else seem to be completely puzzled about what could have caused this, and they just shrug and leave it as a mystery for the ages. "Well, it just happens... people commit terrorist acts because... you know... they are mentally ill or something, you ...

This will be a slightly different post in this "predictions for the near future" series in that it will not deal with the regressive left and their ideology... but with their critics, the "anti-SJWs". I have mentioned this already in a couple of past blog posts, but I have noticed a trend, perhaps slightly worrying trend, among the anti-SJW skeptic community (especially on YouTube). The more the regressive left gains power, and the more totalitarian and draconian they become, the more they are pushing their critics away. Away towards which direction? Towards conservatism. American conservatism in particular. As I have been saying many times, American conservatives are very right in some things, but also very wrong in others. The worrying thing is that when anti-SJW skeptics agree with American conservatives on those things they are right, and the more the regressive left pushes them further into conservatism, the more palatable everything that American conser...

I wrote yesterday a blog post about this one big-name anti-SJW YouTuber who made a video promoting the banning of a person from YouTube because of that person's past crimes. That person had recently uploaded a new video, which elicited this response video by this anti-SJW. The video in question contained nothing illegal or infringing, yet he still demanded that person to be banned from YouTube, because of his past crimes. His right to free speech be damned. The comment section is an absolute echo chamber. Out of curiosity I skimmed through approximately 500 top comments. Not a single dissenting opinion. Not one. (Well, except for mine.) Every single user was in full agreement that that person should be removed from YouTube and all his videos taken down (even the non-infringing ones). Besides of course the about 80% of them who wanted that person murdered. Do you know what's most astonishing about all this? Even amusing, if it weren't such a serious thing? That same a...

I posted a year ago about this one rather big-name anti-SJW YouTube critic who is being a huge hypocrite. He is extremely prolific, uploading 3 to 4 videos every day on average. He is heavily critical of the regressive left, their ideology, their policies and their tactics. Every time a conservative, or someone who is critical of the left, gets banned from a social media platform, YouTube, Patreon, or somewhere else, he almost always makes one or more videos about it, commenting on and criticizing that company's leftist policies and imposing restrictions on people's free speech. He himself got banned for life from Magic the Gathering tournaments because SJW Wizards of the Coast didn't like his politically incorrect memes and criticism of a female cosplayer. He dedicated like a year on that subject alone, exposing the hypocrisy of Wizards of the Coast for banning people for their expression of opinions, but just giving minor infractions to cheaters and not doing anything ...