What grinds my gears

 ... the one that has convinced the world that it's not a cult. I recently stumbled across a video on YouTube of the type "professional of such-and-such profession reviews scenes (related to the profession) from movies", more precisely " Cult Deprogrammer Reviews Cults from Movies & TV ". The person being presented in the video is one Rick Alan Ross, who has been helping people escape cults since 1982. He comments on movies and shows depicting deep cults. I couldn't help but (once again) see striking parallels to the "social justice" ideology movement that has invaded modern academia and much of society, and which has countless rabid followers and activists who will do almost anything for the ideology. Many of the things he says in that video applies very accurately to the "social justice" communities (especially in universities and many other places). Many of the behaviors, tactics, attitudes, techniques are strikingly similar. There

At this moment the United States is experiencing an unprecedented amount of inflation. Apparently this is mainly caused by the Federal Reserve printing way too much money. This amount is just staggering. It has been estimated that in the past 18 months the Federal Reserve has printed more money than in the preceding entire history of the United States combined. For an unfathomable reason they seem to have forgotten one of the most basic principles of economy: A country cannot get richer by simply printing more money. Printing more money will not boost the economy. What happens if a country prints excessive amounts of money, which does not correspond to the actual GDP of the country, is that the value of the money decreases. In other words, a greatly accelerated (and detrimental) inflation. Printing excessive amounts of money does not make the country richer, nor does it boost the economy. It isn't even a zero-sum game, where the economy of the country isn't affected. It's

I'm trying to think of any holiday, festivity, celebration or other kind of national celebratory event (in any nation, during the history of humanity) where what is being celebrated is merely the characteristics of a small group of people within society, and I can't think of anything. Many holidays and national festivities are very old and traditional, and just celebrate some kind of event or idea, or merely exist for people to have an official day off and have a good time with family and friends. Many nations have an official independence day in order to celebrate the very existence of the nation itself, and its people. But this doesn't celebrate what those people are, how they are like, what characteristics they have. It especially doesn't celebrate just a sub-group of people. It celebrates the country and its people as a whole. In many countries there may be one-off or recurring events celebrating or commemorating a person or a group of people. However, pretty much i

Especially in recent years the modern "social justice" ideology movement (which includes the so-called "black lives matter" movement) has made it quite clear and unambiguous that their goal is to dismantle and take down current western society, culture and societal structures. This is not something inferred or read between the lines. This is something that many of them very directly, unambiguously, openly and unashamedly state, as if there was nothing wrong with that (and in fact, it's the only right thing to do). They have this incredibly naive and outright stupid idea that in order to build a "better" society, the existing one needs to be taken down, dismantled, and destroyed, so that the "better" society can be built from a fresh start. Their stupidity and ignorance knows no bounds. Maybe, maybe , that idea could perhaps work if we are talking about a "society" consisting of a few dozen people. It most certainly does not work whe

One very characteristic aspect of the current far-leftist "social justice" ideology and indoctrination is how easily it can affect the behavior of most (if not all) of its followers. When some far-leftist academic, journalist, speaker, blogger or other kind of influencer who manages to have enough outreach comes up with yet another new rule for the far-leftist masses to follow, those masses will quite often just start obeying that new rule unquestioningly and without criticism. Quite many years ago (almost a decade now, I think) some such person came up with the idea that clapping is somehow "triggering" (to this day I have not seen a single argument, rationalization or study about it, but social justice activists don't need such things) and thus people should start snapping their fingers instead. And, of course, like the well-trained brainwashed drones they are, the social justice retards started snapping their fingers at anything that one of them said (especia

January 6th was the day when some morons decided to forcefully enter the Capitol building and trash the place in protest of the election results. By "hoax" I don't mean that it didn't happen, or that it wasn't a bunch of retarded conservatives / Republicans who perpetrated it. Of course that happened. By "hoax" I mean the narrative that the far left in America, starting with and very much including the entirety of the Democratic Party, created around the riot. It was just a riot. Some completely unarmed idiots entering a governmental building and trashing the place. (In fact, compared to many far-leftist riots it was quite tame in comparison. The most damage they did was to break a few pieces of furniture and throw office material around. Pretty much nothing that a few hours of work from a cleaning team wouldn't completely fix. The amount of actual property damage was very moderate compared to those far-leftist riots.) However, this is not the pictu

I have made several blog posts about a pet peeve of mine: Matt Parker is a quite talented and entertaining maths popularized on YouTube, and I was subscribed to him for quite many years. However, some time in the late 2019 he decided, or got indoctrinated, to become an activist to promote the use of the pronoun "they" to refer to everybody. His videos quite quickly became extraordinarily obnoxious about it, as he not only used that pronoun exclusively to refer to people, anybody, but in fact he overused it whenever he could, littering his speech with way too many instance of that pronoun. (In a short speech lasting 20 or 30 seconds he could literally use the pronoun at least 10 times, oftentimes even inserting it in places where it didn't have to be.) It appears, however, that as of late he has toned down his "they pronoun" activism . In fact, in a couple of recent videos he is actually clearly using "she" and "he" pronouns for people he kno

Recently the prominent political commentator and activist Ben Shapiro had a public debate with Ana Kasparian, of The Young Turks fame, talking about, among other things, socialism vs. capitalism. At one point Shapiro asks Kasparian to give even one example of a socialist country that has been successful and prosperous, and she answers with "countries in Europe". The most annoying thing about this was that Shapiro didn't object to the claim that there are socialist countries in Europe. There is not a single socialist country in Europe! There might have been back in the times of the Soviet Union, but that has not been so for quite a long time now. Kasparian is, like so many other people, confusing "social services" with "socialism", just because the word "social" appears in both. That's the same kind of mistake as thinking that a "community" is the same thing as "communism", just because those words are similar. Free un

And now for something completely different. Any experienced and savvy person who builds PCs from components knows, or at least should know, one of the most important and basic principles of starting a new PC build: Always start by building a minimalistic setup in order to see that the system will POST. In other words, just take the motherboard and, on a table, add to it the essential components (CPU and RAM, a GPU only if the CPU doesn't have an integrated one, or if you also want to test that the GPU works, connect the PSU), and try turning it on to see that you get an image and you get to BIOS just fine. Then perhaps even connect the SSD or hard drive and install the OS to make sure that it works. Only if everything works fine should you proceed to the actual PC building. The reason for this is that if there's any problem with the setup (which isn't actually all that uncommon) you will be saving yourself a lot of work and trouble. There are many reasons why the setup migh

I have written about this exact subject several times in the past in this blog, but I can't help but feel the need to reiterate this fact, because it's really frustrating to see this time and again. The notion that "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences" is a favorite adage of far-leftist activists, but it's so widespread and ingrained that I have even seen their critics and anti-SJWs repeat it. Not objecting to the claim is extremely common, even on the anti-SJW side. The claim is absolutely false . Freedom of speech does mean freedom from consequences! That's the very definition! If an expression of opinion results in some kind of negative consequences, then it's not free speech anymore. It's punishable speech. It's restricted speech. It's forbidden speech. That's the exact opposite of free speech. Saying "I support freedom of speech, but freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences" is contrad

In many states and cities in the United States there's implemented a so-called "gifted&talented program" for school students, all the way from kindergarten up, which has been in place for many decades. The intent of the program is to allow especially gifted students to learn more advanced subjects at a faster pace, ie. allow their talents to flourish, and for them to more easily achieve what they are capable of. In other words, these talented students are not confined to the pace and subjects of the average, and instead can advance more quickly in their studies, knowledge and experience by attending special classes that deal with and concentrate on more advanced studies early on. This, of course, not only benefits the students themselves but society at large. Many of these talented people, who have been taught advanced subjects early on, will easily go to university, probably graduate with great grades, and become successful scientists, engineers, medical doctors, or

The Sámi people are indigenous people of the northern parts of Europe and Northwest Russia. They have a very long and rich history and culture. In Finland the vast majority of them live in the most northern parts of the country. Being very traditional indigenous people with a very long history, they have formed over the centuries very distinct and recognizable craftmanship, especially when it comes to clothes, tapestry, and many other forms of practical and decorative objects. So much so, in fact, that for many decades Sámi art and products have been very popular among tourists and Finns alike. A lot of Finnish households have some kind of Sámi artwork, such as tapestry or other similar decorations. Sámi clothes are also popular. This is a great source of income for many Sámi artisans and tailors. Except... in the last few years they have seen their sales drop like a lead balloon. Nowadays their sales are absolutely abysmal, and many of them can't make a living out of it anymore. I

Recently the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) suspended one of their professors for misconduct. What did this professor do? Did he say or suggest something racist or sexist? Did he use a forbidden word? Did he express forbidden opinions on class, on campus, online, or elsewhere? Did he discriminate against his students in some manner? No. And in fact, the opposite: He was suspended because he refused to treat his student differently based on race, and treated them all equally regardless of race, gender, or anything else. More particularly, he refused to grade black students more leniently than whites . In his own words: "Recently, I was suspended from my job for refusing to treat my black students as lesser than their non-black peers." That's right. The UCLA wants their students to be treated differently depending on their skin color, their race. The UCLA does not want their students to be treated equally regardless of race. They want black students to be tre