What grinds my gears

I have been now for many years writing in this blog almost exclusively (perhaps way too much) about the regressive left, social justice warriors, and how anti-racism has gone way too far, creating more and more of an oppressive totalitarian establishment that erodes people's fundamental rights (such as the right to free speech) and punishes people for the slightest of wrongthink or using the wrong word or language (completely regardless of context or intent), and where political violence has become the norm and not only accepted but outright promoted by many members of the regressive left and the mainstream media. However, I don't see myself as an extremist who can only see one side of the issue and refuses to see the other (which is way too common, both in the extreme left and in the extreme right). If there are problems on "the other side" as well, I like to call it out, as it is. Given the extreme lengths that the regressive left has been going during the last ...

Recently Marvel Studios released an extended uncut version of a short scene in the movie Captain Marvel, which has made the rounds, with pretty much everybody commenting on it. In the original movie at one point at the earlier parts of it Captain Marvel is shown to somehow get a motorbike and riding away with it. The deleted portion shows exactly how she gets it. You might already know how the scene goes, but here's a short summary just in case: Captain Marvel is checking a map when some douche on a motorcycle approaches her and acts in an extremely stereotypical Hollywood asshole manly way, asking if she needs a ride, and for her to smile. She then steals his jacket, helmet and motorcycle by threatening to destroy his hand. She has a very smug expression on her face while doing this. It would be interesting to know why they deleted this portion of the scene, as it only takes less than a minute. It could just be what happens to most movies: The original rough cut is way to...

To this day common internet lore "knows" that, allegedly, Bill Gates at some point uttered the now-famous statement "640K ought to be enough for anybody" (referring to the IBM PC, which for like a decade had a 1MB memory limit, 384 kilobytes of it reserved for the hardware and 640 kilobytes being available for the running software). It's actually unknown where this claim, and this utterance, originates from. The earliest instances of it appearing on the internet is the signature (ie. footer) of a usenet post made in 1992. This in itself makes it highly suspect, especially given that Bill Gates allegedly said it in the very early 1980's (the year 1981 being the most commonly suggested year). How come some usenet post made ten years after the fact is the oldest record of this whole thing that we can find? No other mention anywhere . No news articles (online or offline), no mentions in any website by anybody, anywhere... It's quite likely that somebody ...

Suppose that every time you go to a convenience store to purchase something, the store owner would send a full list of purchases you made to all your family and friends. Without telling you, informing you, or asking for your permission to do so. And you had in fact no way of knowing this is happening unless they tell you about it, or you start noticing that you are receiving such information about your family members or friends, and start wondering if they are getting that from you as well. Or suppose that every time you rent a movie online, or start watching the movie, the rental site would automatically send a notification about this to all your family members and friends. Again, without telling you or asking your permission, or showing that this is happening. Suppose you went to a naughty website to watch some naughty videos... and the website surreptitiously, without telling you or asking for your permission, sent all your Facebook and Twitter friends a notification that you h...

Other commentators have already dealt with this rather cringeworthy and quite revealing Huffington Post article, but I would like to write a comment myself on one part of it: I'm A Black Woman Living In Asia. This Is What It's Like To Date . The entire article is, from start to finish, nothing but regressive leftist social justice rhetoric that's absolutely obsessed with race, race, race and... did I mention race? The religion of the regressive left. Like with so many social justice activists, the writer seems to be incapable of thinking of anything else than race, in everything, everywhere, all the time. There's much to comment on that article, but let me concentrate on one single paragraph: When it comes to my life in Asia, I’ve never really felt as if there was a systemic or historical agenda against me or people with my skin color. But while I may not have to worry about police brutality, I have seen job postings that contain phrases like “white teacher onl...

Time and again real-life examples have shown that when women are given special status and special exemptions before the law, where a woman's word is taken more seriously than a man's, where the mere accusation of abuse is taken as proof and normal judicial procedures to corroborate these claims are skipped, this causes an explosion in false accusations. This has happened in Spain , where new totalitarian gender discrimination laws were enacted in 2004 which effectively made the mere accusation of a woman against a man to be enough proof for a conviction (to such extent that men and their lawyers are even literally stopped by judges from speaking or presenting any evidence of their innocence; not even making that up). The amount of false accusations exploded, and there has been an ever-increasing counter-campaign against this ever since. This has happened in Israel , in an eerily similar manner. Women routinely abuse their power to abuse men and, for example, get free taxi...

In Finland, analog TV had been in use since the 1950's. In 1996 the government made the decision that all TV broadcasts would be transitioned to digital broadcasting by 2006. The first digital TV broadcasts started in 2001, and analog TV broadcasts were slowly phased out during the years, and completely and officially terminated in 2007. This was a rather lucrative time for companies manufacturing and selling digital TV receivers (which at first were separate boxes, and later were more commonly integrated into new TVs, especially the upcoming LCD/Led flat TVs, as this period of time also started the transitioning away from CRTs.) For many people this didn't feel right. Many analog CRT TVs were quite literally dirt cheap. You could buy a small TV for pennies, especially if used, from some flea market or such. The new digi-TV boxes were quite expensive in comparison. (You could easily get a small used CRT TV for like 10€ or less, while digi-TV boxes at the time typically sold...

And they are not discriminated against by deep South rednecks. No, by the "progressive" left. By universities, and schools in general. In increasing manner by social justice warriors. Ironically, it wasn't even so many years ago that East Asians were clumped by the regressive left among all the other "oppressed minorities", and thus given special privileges, protections, and special treatment by the regressive left. This has been changing rapidly. I suppose the critics pointing out that East Asians are actually some of the most "privileged" citizens has sunk in. After all, they have the highest average SAT scores (and by quite a margin), the highest average household income, the highest employment rates, the highest average salaries, and overall they are the ethnic group that is the most successful on average, using basically any measurement of success you want to use. (Studiousness and a culture of hard work does pay.) The SJWs have taken notice...

A skeptic is someone who doesn't accept extraordinary or significant claims without enough proper valid evidence and verification. In other words, a skeptic is someone with high standards of (proper) evidence. In general, a skeptic either rejects or considers a claim undecided (and perhaps even undecidable) if it hasn't been supported and corroborated properly and satisfactorily, using proper methodology. Proper skepticism is usually applied to scientific claims about the universe and physical phenomena, but it can also be applied to other things, such as socio-politics and human affairs. For example, in proper journalism this takes the form of research and fact-checking: Instead of rushing to publish something just because someone somewhere made a claim (which has become oh so common nowadays), the journalist does some research to check that there's enough corroborating evidence to warrant the claim. Did the event happen as claimed? Is there some bias in the reporting of...

I'm not here talking about any sort of income inequality between men and women, but about income inequality in different types of job, and even between individuals working in the same kind of job. A complete equality of outcome for every single person is unreasonable and unjustified. If you have a microscopically small community, say like 10 people at most, and it's some kind of completely self-sufficient independent agrarian community (like some kind of Amish style isolated community), then maybe, maybe , you could get away with absolute equality of "income" (although there wouldn't be any sort of "income" in the first place in such a community, because there would hardly be any need for money. But perhaps if we are talking about some form personal possessions.) However, once a community starts being any larger than that, it just cannot exist unless different people in it have different tasks and responsibilities. In other words, different people ha...

For many years I have been, among many other people, writing about how the neo-marxist neo-feminist regressive leftist social justice ideology is going to spread from universities to the rest of society. Most universities, especially in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, but in an increasing manner also in other western countries, have become cult indoctrination and training camps for social justice activists. And these people who go to university and get indoctrinated will one day become our politicians, lawmakers, judges, journalists, company CEO's, and so on and so forth. In other words, it starts with universities, and spreads from there to the entirety of the rest of society, from the top towards the bottom. (In fact, this kind of "soft invasion" tactic is well known among KGB agents since the 50's and prior.) Since the average completion time of university studies is between 5 and 8 years, and since this campaign has been going on for at least...

The video game Far Cry 5 by Ubisoft is set in a fictional town in rural Montana, in the United States, and depicts largely conservative characters. However, the game is very apolitical and, besides a couple of instances of light satire, makes no political statements or take any real-life political stances. Not surprisingly this didn't sit well with SJW game journalists who can't stand American conservatives being depicted in video games without there being some kind of political statement against them. About a half dozen online publications tried a half-assed attempt at a smearing campaign, which fell largely on deaf ears. (Since they were largely ignored, as it should, they relatively quickly moved to something else. When the sharks smell no blood in the water, they quite soon go hunt somewhere else.) It appears this isn't an isolated rare case with Ubisoft. The SJW game journalists are at it again, trying to politicize yet another new Ubisoft game, which depicts a squa...

I have written many blog posts about how the huge Silicon Valley tech megacorporations that control 90+% of all internet traffic and people's online presence and interactions have become more and more tyrannical and totalitarian, silencing, banning and punishing people for the "wrong" political opinions. Some people have presented an argument in their defense: Basically, these corporations are politically tyrannical (and becoming more and more so) because they have no choice . How so? Money, by dear boy. Money. These corporations are offering free services to people. You don't have to pay a single dime for their services. You can create accounts, you can post and communicate with people, you can upload and share text, pictures and video. All for free. Yet these are some of the richest corporations in the world. How? How are they making money, without paying customers? Advertising, that's how. And that's the problem. Advertisers hold them by the bal...

Regarding my previous blob post about " monopolies and the modern political climate ", I suddenly came to a realization: The dozen-or-so Silicon Valley giant tech megacorporations and banking companies (most of which are headquartered within the same city, and routinely collaborate and collude with each other for political goals) that control 90+% of all internet traffic and online social media, have more power than the government itself. After all, consider that: - The government cannot silence you, censor you, or ban you from a public forum because of a political opinion. These corporations can. - The government cannot stop you from engaging in freelance journalism. These corporations can. - The government cannot stop you from disseminating your opinions to a willing audience. These corporations can. - The government cannot stop you from engaging in legal business transactions, or from receiving donation money from willing donors. These corporations can. - The g...

The "listen and believe" rhetoric has been around for almost a decade now (one of its most prominent and famous advocates being Anita Sarkeesian). The notion behind it is that, allegedly, modern patriarchal western societies simply tend to dismiss women's claims of having been raped or sexually harassed, very rarely taking it seriously, and often trying to defend the accused (because he is, after all, a man, and a patriarchal society defends men from the accusations of women.) (As a side note, and quite ironically, this is actually very much the case, very exactly and literally, in many if not most Islamic countries. Yet good luck trying to make a SJW admit that.) So the "listen and believe" campaign tries to change that. We should "listen" what the woman has to say and believe it by default. If she claims she has been harassed or molested, it's pretty much certain that something has indeed happened to her (even if, perhaps sometimes, she might...

Most countries with a capitalist form of economy have rules and laws to stop private corporations from abusing their customers and their power, as well as smaller companies, and have had these laws for quite a long time. The "social contract" between the government and private corporations is, essentially, "you can privately own property and capital, and you can engage in commercial activity and transactions with minimal or no interference from the government, but you have to play by certain rules. You cannot abuse your power and your riches in order to exploit people and other companies." There are many such laws, but one particular type of law that most such countries have is so-called "competition law", also called antitrust law, and even anti-monopoly law. These laws seek to maintain healthy competition in the market and industry by limiting the monopoly status of companies that get too big. Competition has always been seen as necessary for economy...

This is probably more or less restricted to the United States, but I have noticed how so many conspiracy theorists are for some reason really obsessed with NASA in particular. With the moon landing and UFO conspiracy theories it kind of makes partial sense (although quite often even they talk as if NASA were pretty much the only space agency in the world, and they largely ignore in their rhetoric that there are many other countries that have their own space agencies, like Japan, India and China, among others.) Perhaps the oddest conspiracy theorists that are obsessed with NASA are the flat-earthers. This goes well beyond just "NASA is lying about space flights". I kid you not, but many flat-earthers are in all seriousness saying in their videos things like "NASA tells us that the Sun is 93 million miles away". And yes, that's it. It's not like they say "textbooks, scientists and NASA are telling us". It's just "NASA tells us", ...

I wrote earlier how a man entered a women's powerlifting competition , and won all 9 category events he participated in, and broke 4 world records, just like that. Well, in a quite surprising twist, the official Powerlifting Federation issued a press release where they stated that they did not know about this until after the competition, and that they will not be recognizing the world records, because they categorize the male and female divisions based on biological sex, not on self-identification. This is a really ballsy move, and you can be sure they will be receiving some serious flak for this. They are quite unusually and courageously showing some integrity, and actually defending women and their right to fair competition (something that feminists, ironically, are willfully failing to do). You can be damn sure they will be the target of the SJW mob for this. I just hope they don't cave in due to the pressure. On the other hand, they are making the concession to the c...

The most notorious heinous dictators in history have been classified as such for the real crimes against humanity that they committed. Hitler created and commanded a political party that had the mission from the onset to exterminate all Jews from the world, and engaged in a mass extermination campaign that murdered an estimated 6 million people in concentration camps alone, and even more otherwise. The total number of murders (in peace time, ie. not counting casualties caused to enemy combatants during a war) directly enacted by this party, mostly for eugenics and political reasons, is estimated to be between 10 and 20 million people. Stalin was even worse. The number of people, usually political dissenters, massacred (again, in peace time, not casualties of war) during his regime is estimated to be from 50 all the way to 100 million, which is just staggering, and dwarfs anything that even the nazis did. Most dictators condemned by history did some really massive and heinous crim...

Three and a half years ago Virtual Reality headsets were all the rage. They were going to revolutionize the entire gaming industry. They would make your boring old flat displays obsolete. Nobody would want to play with an old display once they have experienced the marvels of a VR headset. Gaming would be changed forever. Reality turned out to be less exciting, though. While True Believers kept for years claiming how absolutely fantastic the experience is, and how you just have to try it to "get" it, the sales numbers didn't back up all the hype. After all the preorders had been shipped during the first few months after release, sales stagnated almost to a complete halt. A few hundreds of thousands of units had been preordered by eager early adopters, and a couple hundred thousands more were sold soon after... but that was about it. After the eager early adopters had got their headsets, sales almost halted, with sales figures dropping to pitiful lows. Especially so on th...

As might have become clear from some past blog posts, I'm quite a fan of watching so-called "First Amendment Audit" videos on YouTube. This is people, primarily in the United States, simply going to public places to film video, and seeing if their rights to do so are respected. They may film Federal buildings, post offices, police stations, military bases, and all kinds of private corporation headquarters and workplaces (such as, for example, office buildings and oil refineries). As long as they remain at a public space, what they are doing is perfectly legal, this right being guaranteed by the Constitution, and nobody has the right to make them stop. Of course that doesn't deter security guards, police officers, soldiers and other people from trying. Some of these videos can be quite hilarious, with some random security guard getting all angry about his authority not being respected (even though private security guards have exactly zero authority in a public space,...

I wrote earlier about how two men participated in a women's high school sprinting competition , and not only did both of them win, both of them broke the State records for that category. They were allowed to do this, and their results are considered official "women's" sprinting records, merely because they claim to be women. Their biological sex, and the physical advantages that gives them, plays no role here. It wasn't the first, nor the last, time that happened. There have been for years similar stories of men invading women's sports and winning, beating records, and getting all the awards. And it just keeps happening. Trans Athlete DEMOLISHES Four Women's Powerlifting World Records And not only did he break those world records, he won every single one of the 9 powerlifting category events in that competition that he participated in. You know, it's funny that although I am a strong opponent of the modern regressive leftist identitarian s...