What grinds my gears

For years now people have been pointing at the giant Silicon Valley tech megacorporations, who probably control well over 90% of all internet traffic and services (with, perhaps, the exception of certain totalitarian countries like China), showing how they are becoming more and more political by the month, and abusing their power to control what people see, and to control who gets a voice and who doesn't, banning, censoring and unpersoning people with the "wrong" opinions, and blocking them from having any kind of online presence or platform, and blocking them from having any sort of income from this online presence. All of these giant megacorporations are extremely politically biased towards the left, and are in effect in a war against anybody of any notoriety or fame who is on the other side of the political spectrum. The amount of censorship has escalated and escalated. You only need to look but a mere year back in time, and they still only removed content that the...

Assume that one day, out of the blue, the police handed you a fine that you have to pay, or face jail. This is the first time you hear of it. At no point were you questioned, arrested, prosecuted, or anything. Instead, the government just gives you a fine out of nowhere. Moreover, nowhere in the paperwork for the fine does it say what the actual crime that you allegedly committed was. What law did you break? What exactly did you do? When did the crime happened? There's nothing. The paperwork simply says that you broke the law, and thus you have to pay a fine, but it does not say what your crime was, or which law you broke, or when. I think anybody would agree that this would be completely ridiculous, unjust, and against the most fundamental of civil rights. At the very least you should know which law you broke, if you are going to be fined for breaking it (besides being given an opportunity to defend yourself.) Yet, this is exactly what YouTube is doing. Time and again YouTub...

In a previous blog post I commented on how a term, "gaslighting", which had a rather clear and unambiguous meaning in the past, has been co-opted by the regressive leftist feminist academics as, essentially, a tool for the leftist masses to discredit all criticism of their ideology. "Do not listen to them. They are just trying to make you doubt your convictions. They are gaslighting you. Ignore everything they say. It's nothing but deception." Relatively recently they have come up with another fancy academic-sounding term, which is once again being used for the exact same purpose. In this case, it's the term "dogwhistling". Originally, this word means some kind of word, sentence, expression, gesture or action which all in itself sounds innocent, but is a covert signal to likeminded people, people with the same ideology, people who know what it means. Like a codeword, or an euphemism invented among the people holding that particular ideology. R...

I have previously written a couple of blog posts about the difference in rhetoric and tone in social media between typical SJWs and typical anti-SJWs. (You can see those blog posts here and here .) As you might guess from this blog, I quite often watch YouTube videos that are critical of SJWs and their policies and actions. While I'm not all that interested in watching videos from the other side (I have too little time to waste my life watching them, really), I sometimes stumble across them. As you might guess, I have noticed a drastic difference in the average tone and rhetoric in the comment sections of these videos. On anti-SJW videos you get semi-regularly your archetypal American conservative comments, typically about the 2nd Amendment (as if guns solved every problem, which just isn't true ), and some comments may be outright mockery of the people or person being talked about in the video (if it's talking about a group of people, entity, organization, or a part...

While theoretically there are multiple political parties in the United States, it's nevertheless a de facto two-party goverment, with the Democratic and Republican parties controlling the vast majority (and often all) of congress, and every single president having been of one of the two parties. These two parties have always disagreed on many key issues, but there's one issue they have both always agreed on, since very long time: Tough immigration policy enforcement. Meaning enforcing a strong border security, stopping people from entering the country illegally, and deporting those who have succeeded in doing so. Every single president and presidential candidate from both parties have always had that as one of their main policies. Including very much all the Democratic Party candidates and presidents. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton... all of them. Stronger border control and deportation of illegal immigrants was one of their main policies, both during their p...

People have started noticing recently that Anita Sarkeesian has repeatedly alluded at her "non-profit" organization, Feminist Frequency, being in financial trouble. I have always been quite cynical about that "non-profit" status, tending to think that it's "non-profit in legal status only", in that yes, it's legally registered as a non-profit organization (which, as far as I know, means that the company itself cannot make significant yearly profits, which I think means it cannot have some kind of investors and shareholders who earn money from the company; in other words, the assets and capital of the company cannot significantly raise, all earnings going to justified expenditures). One has to wonder, however, where all that money is going to, because as an organization it's not doing much. Luckily, in the United States one requirement imposed onto non-profit organizations is that they have to be 100% open about their earnings and expenditur...

Shaft is a new installation, made in 2019, in the long series of films of that name. Famously, it's one of the best-known movie franchises with a black protagonist. The 2019 movie was directed by a black director, Tim Story, and stars the famous Samuel L. Jackson. In fact, the majority of the main cast is portrayed by black actors. Naturally, the leftist SJW journalists love the movie, while the general population, the racists they are, absolutely hate it and... Wait... What? Those numbers can't possibly be right. The professional critics are absolutely trashing the movie (34% is extremely low when it comes to aggregated movie scores) while the general audience is absolutely loving it (likewise 94% is an extremely good audience score). How can this be possible? This is impossible! Well, of course it's not impossible. If there's one thing that you can be sure of nowadays is that if the professional critics hate a movie or TV series, while the audience ...

It has been a bit over three years now that the major modern VR headsets, the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, were published. (Technically speaking the gaming industry had at least 2 to 3 years more time than that to prepare because the Oculus Rift Development Kits had existed for that long prior, but in practice they had pretty much no influence on subsequent events, so that can be safely dismissed.) It has been a bit less than three years since the PSVR was released, but one can say all the major VR platforms have now existed for about three years. Although there's really no reason for it, VR became pretty much in essence its own gaming platform, almost its own separate "game console", at least by the fact that something like 99% of VR games are VR-only, and the "traditional" games have no VR support of any kind. There's extremely little overlap, and very, very rarely does the same game support both full VR gameplay and non-VR gameplay, even though this te...

Consider the crime rates in the United States . There's something rather peculiar about these graphs: There's a general increase in property crimes up until the 1990's, after which they start dropping. Violent crimes stay about steady up until that same time period, after which they start drastically dropping. What happened in the 90's that caused this? What's so special about that time period? Perhaps that's the wrong question to ask. Perhaps the correct question to ask is what happened when the generation that became adults in the 90's were born. In other words, what happened in the early 1970's? What happened in the early 1970's is that abortion was legalized in the entirety of the United States. That's what. Which means that less and less people were born into families that didn't want them, and thus, proportionally speaking, more and more people were wanted and loved, rather than neglected and mistreated. I don't kn...

The biggest (or one of the biggest) video game magazines (that are still being physically printed) in Finland is Pelit . I have always had a rather positive attitude towards it because unlike so many other video game publications, it has for the most part stayed out of identity politics and attacking their own customers. In fact, in the reviews of some of the games that have been the subject of artificial identity politics controversy, the reviewer might have made an allusion to it, but without taking any sort of stance (and, in fact, in a couple of cases there may have even been a very subtle message that the whole controversy is ridiculous. Which, like always, has always been the case.) But, like always, this cannot last. In their newest number they have a big opinion piece that's full-on SJW rhetoric, about "inclusivity", "diversity", "representation", "white heterosexual men", and how "diversity" in hiring is so important in t...

Anita Sarkeesian rose to fame for almost destroying the video game industry, and causing it lasting damage, both for its public reputation as well as internally, that can be somewhat seen to this day. However, she has become pretty much completely irrelevant and almost nobody is talking about her anymore, nor is she paid much attention. Even the YouTube channel of her organization is getting only pitiful amounts of views per video (and this has been so for several years now). But that doesn't mean she isn't trying to remain relevant, thinking of herself as someone important and influential, and trying to insert herself into every hot topic that's currently trending. This recent tweet of hers is really a new low: This is a not-so-veiled threat. "Nice game you have there. Would be a shame if something were to happen to it..." Yeah. Anita Sarkeesian thinks of herself as so influential and so relevant that she thinks that she can extort a company like CD P...

For years the regressive left has been engaging in a whitewashing campaign about Islam. Muslims in general, and many Islamic scholars in particular, especially the extremists, are happy to play along, and repeat all the same mantras as the regressive leftists (who know absolutely nothing about Islam). However, there are many well-known facts about Islam that they simply want to ignore, and categorically deny, against even the word of Muslim scholars themselves. The first two of these facts are they key to the rest of them, so they are the most fundamental. 1) Islam is a "Muslims-only" religion One key thing to understand that whenever Islamic scholars speak of positive aspects and attitudes in the religion, they are talking about having those positive attitudes with and doing the positive things to other Muslims. In general, non-Muslims are not included in this category. Many of the points below are related to this, but here's a good example: Many extremist Isl...

It is highly ironic that universities played a key role in building modern western civilization, and now they are playing a key role in the destruction of that very same civilization. More and more aspects of our society have been invaded and taken over by totalitarian quasi-religious zealots who are intent in destroying everything that makes our civilization a successful and peaceful technologically and socially advanced modern welfare society. The main influencer of public opinion, the press, the mainstream media, is in the western world almost unanimously extreme-leftist, and has become in an ever-increasing and accelerating manner nothing but a propaganda machine and mouthpiece for the totalitarian ideology of the regressive left, regularly engaging in distorted and fabricated stories in order to promote the agenda. More and more schools and other educational institutions have been taken over by activists whose mission is to indoctrinate people, from as a young age as possible,...

Many times when watching YouTube videos about the latest incident of censorship by one of the Silicon Valley tech megacorporations, or the latest stupidity said or done by some institution, like a university or whatever, or whatever the latest craziness or trampling of people's rights is, almost invariably you will see in the comment section of the video people saying things like: "This is why we need the 2nd Amendment!" or: "Remember: Never give up your guns!" I have several times written a response to such a comment, along the lines of: "How exactly is the 2nd Amendment helping this situation? University after university, corporation after corporation, institution after institution, has been invaded and overtaken by regressive leftist ideologues, who are indoctrinating their students into becoming activists, and enacting all kinds of draconian rules that trample over people's rights and freedoms. What exactly has your beloved 2nd Amendment d...

One thing about the regressive leftist social justice ideology is that when they get something completely wrong, and are explained why they are wrong over and over... they eventually learn. Not always, but in some cases they do eventually learn, especially when the evidence is too overwhelming. The problem is, they learn the wrong lesson. As an example, for years and years, and to a large extent to this day, they kept pounding on and on about how white people in the west are the most "privileged" class, and that all the other ethnic groups are significantly less privileged. Their critics started pointing out to them that actually no, white people are not the ethnic group that's the most "privileged". Using pretty much any measure of "privilege" and "success" you want, east Asians are actually better off than white people. On average, east Asians living in the west (especially in the United States) have the highest income, the best jobs, ...

Final Fantasy VII is considered by many to be one of the best, if not even the best, game in the entire Final Fantasy series. In my opinion, it's not a horrible game per se, but I'm not a big fan of it either, for many reasons. My initial experience with the game was less than positive, as it left me with a quite sour impression. To understand why, we have to go back to the time when I played the game for the first time, in the early 2000's. I had previously played Final Fantasy VIII , as well as Final Fantasy IX . All three of these games are for the same console generation, namely the first PlayStation. My primary notion of what a (at that time) "modern" 3D Final Fantasy game should look like was shaped by these two games. At the time, FF VIII looked absolutely fantastic. It might not look like much by modern standards, but you have to remember that this was the era of the first PlayStation, and the year was 2000. In that time period, in that context,...

Social justice warriors are trying to gain absolute power and control, and create a society that's to their liking. However, there's one thing that absolutely no social justice warrior understands. Not a single one of them: There will be no time, no matter what happens, when they will declare "OK, society is now exactly as we want it, it's perfect, and there's no more need for social justice activism. Everything is fixed now." That will never, ever happen, no matter how society is changed. The reason is not because society cannot be changed. The reason is that social justice warriors will never be happy with how society is, no matter how it's changed. The social justice ideology is a cult of oppression. Being oppressed is exalted as a virtue. The more oppressed you are, the higher your pedestal is. It doesn't matter if you are actually demonstrably oppressed, or whether you are just making up more and more forms of "oppression" that ...

Doug Walker is a comedian/actor who self-publishes comedy sketches, reviews and other sort of videos online. By far his most famous fictional character role is "the Nostalgia Critic", which gained him and his small team enormous online fame (and huge amounts of income) since about 2007-2008. The Nostalgia Critic show concentrates on making humorous "reviews" of movies (for the longest time only movies from the 80's and older, hence the name "nostalgia" critic). He showed a great amount of talent at making these "reviews" interesting, entertaining and hilarious. He also made a few other shows with other fictional characters, some of them being quite good as well. Then, in 2012, pretty much at the height of his popularity, he suddenly decided that he was tired of his Nostalgia Critic show, and decided to end it, and start an entirely new and unrelated show named "Demo Reel". This didn't sit well at all with his audience and fa...

(The title is a reference to a previous blog post of mine: Captain Disillusion chose the blue pill .) LegalEagle is a YouTube channel run by a lawyer in New York. It consists of him reviewing legal dramas, and other movies and shows where legal proceedings happen, and grades them on their legal accuracy. He sometimes also makes other kinds of videos commenting on some famous legal case currently in the news. He also has a series where he takes some movie or TV show, and simply points out (mostly in a tongue-in-cheek fashion) all the crimes that are being committed (and details on why they are crimes). These videos are very interesting and didactic. They are a great way of learning what kind of mistakes and shortcuts most movies and TV shows make when it comes to legal proceedings, court cases, and so on, and how the same scenario would have happened in real life in an actual court case. It's also interesting when he points out when a show actually gets something right (which m...

To the regressive left in the United States, and by extension to pretty much the rest of the western world, Donald Trump is Hitler incarnate, while the previous president, Barack Obama, was pretty much a saint who didn't do anything wrong. Yet, the vast majority of people, especially leftists, are completely ignorant of many of the things that Obama did that are actually worse than Trump has ever done so far. Many of these are worse (at least from the perspective of the regressive left) than any other president during the entire history of the United States has done. For example, Trump is being constantly blamed and vilified for wanting and enacting stronger border control, especially on the southern border. What almost no leftist knows is how many illegal immigrants were deported from the country during Obama's presidency, under the direct policies of his administration. Over 3 million. That's right, over 3 million illegal immigrants were deported from the United S...