What grinds my gears

A South Korean minister recently announced the government's plan to increase the amount of immigration to the country by several orders of magnitude. The reason for this was stated very clearly: South Korea has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, only about 0.85 births per woman. (On average 2 births per woman are necessary to keep the population unchanged.) And, as seems to be the doctrine of the modern world, low birth rates are considered a huge catastrophe, essentially a death sentence to a country, and the only way to fix this huge problem is to bring into the country millions of foreign nationals from distant lands. Because, obviously, that is the only possible solution to that problem. And to pretty much any other problem facing a country. If South Korea really intends to do this, it's a huge mistake. Firstly, I don't buy at all this "low birth rates are a huge catastrophe" mentality, as I have written before . Local populations have always gone

There's a big irony when it comes to the United States as compared to most other countries. You see, the United States is one of the very few countries where you don't need to present your ID to police even if demanded to do so, unless you are reasonably suspected of a crime. In fact, a few states go so far that you only need to present ID if you have been arrested , and no sooner. This is a direct consequence and interpretation of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. In other words, the United States is not a so-called stop-and-id country. In contrast, in the vast, vast majority of other countries (regardless of form of government) you are required by law to present ID if requested by a police officer, no matter what the circumstances, no reasons need given. In other words, the vast majority of other countries are so-called stop-and-id countries. So what's the irony? The irony is that the United States is one of the very few countries where the pol

One of the bigger sociopolitical commentators on YouTube, who goes by the nickname hbomberguy , recently published a video about egregious blatant plagiarism by other big popular YouTube creators, named " Plagiarism and You(Tube) ". The video quickly exploded in popularity, garnering millions of views in less than a week. As of writing this, the video has over 11 million views, making it one of the hottest topics on YouTube in the past weeks. The video talks about, and provides clear evidence of, how several big-name YouTubers have sometimes and in some cases even routinely blatantly plagiarized other people's content (usually from online articles) in a manner that makes it look like it's their own original material, without giving proper (or sometimes any) credit to the original authors. Many wildly popular videos on YouTube, with millions of views, are such examples of blatant plagiarism. Many of these plagiarists are extremely popular and very liked among their aud

At one point I binge-watched a big bunch of "the last days of (such-and-such celebrity)" YouTube videos, which are, actually, often quite interesting for some reason. I noticed one common theme in most of these early deaths, something that isn't actually any surprise to anybody, but which nevertheless people just tend to shrug off. And that's the amount of prescription and over-the-counter meds that these celebrities stuffed themselves copious amounts with, pretty much as a matter of course. While these drugs rarely directly have caused early deaths of these people, in many cases they were quite arguably contributing factors. This got me thinking how in many countries taking over-the-counter pills like candy has been normalized for decades (probably since all the way back to the 1950's, if not even earlier). Somehow we have, for a large part, become a world-wide culture where we tend to think of over-the-counter prescription-free meds as "safe", and man

When it comes to the far left, it seems that they only know extremes. Whatever their idea or agenda is, they always have to take it to the absolute extreme, always and everywhere. Even things that might have started as minor details are usually taken to the completely insane extreme over the years. Let's take, for example, the question of people's "preferred pronouns" and the "problem" of people "misgendering" other people. In recent years they have taken these "crimes" so much to the extreme that in some countries you may even have the police come knocking your door if you "misgender" someone, or use the "wrong" pronoun. Some countries are already in the process of passing laws against it (if they haven't passed them already.) That's how far the campaign has already gone. More at the everyday street level, whenever you are dealing with far-leftist activists, if you dare to "misgender" someone or use

Japan is an extremely modern and technically advanced nation that's very peaceful and safe, with very low crime rates, and a very rich culture that goes back literally millenia, a culture of honor, respect and cooperation. Japanese people tend to be very polite, very well-behaved, hard-working and culturally honor-bound to do their best no matter what the task. The country is extremely rich in history and culture, while at the same time being also one of the richest countries in the world and on the forefront of technology and science. Not everything in Japanese society is perfect, though. And I'm not here talking about people overworking themselves almost to death, or the shut-ins (hikikomori), or any of the other such ancillary cultural phenomena. I'm talking about something much, much darker, and it relates to Japan's legal system. More particularly, to capital punishment. It's not only that capital punishment still exists in Japan (and not just as an obsolete hi

Because of recent events in Israel (as of writing this), there have been many instances of harassment of Jewish people in other countries, especially in the United States. And not just on the streets of cities, some back alleys, some rundown poor crime-ridden neighborhoods. Such harassment has been happening in some of the most high-class prestigious places, like many university campuses, by university students. There have been several reports of this, such as for example Jewish university students being locked up in the university's library while a mob of people are banging on the doors and windows, aggressively shouting to them, and the Jewish students being too afraid to go out, and many other such instances. Note that most if not all of these Jewish students are not citizens of Israel nor have ever even visited the country. They have zero connections to either the Israeli government or even Israel itself. In other words, most of them have absolutely nothing to do with what'

One of the key characteristics of the left (not with every single individual, of course, but on average) is their trust of authorities and the government. Leftists are always the ones who not only want to obey government mandates, but willfully try to make others obey those mandates as well. (Perhaps no better example of this was the covid-19 pandemic and the governmental restrictions and recommendations about it: The people who most furiously defended and enforced those mandates and recommendations were overwhelmingly leftists. And that's just one example.)   Conversely, one of the key characteristics of the conservative right, especially in the United States, is their distrust of authorities and the government. "Don't tread on me!" is one of their slogans. It's a message to the government: "Leave us alone." Where the left wants big authoritarian government, the right wants small government that interferes as little as possible and leaves people and bus

Some decades ago some critics of the multiculturalist ideology coined the term "ethnopositive existence" to describe the Orwellian doublethink of the far-leftist multiculturalists of the 1990's and early 2000's with regards to human race (a phenomenon that still exists to this day among the left). It means that the concept of "race", when it comes to humans, either is an actual real thing that exists, or something that is not real and does not exist and should be got rid of, depending on which one of those is the most convenient for the current conversation at hand. More particularly (and most usually), if the existence of human race in a particular context somehow puts white people in a negative light and/or non-white people in a positive light, then it most definitely exists and is a real thing. In contrast, if the existence of human race in another context puts white people in a positive light and/or non-white people in a negative light, then it most defi

For pretty much as long as humans have existed, who were able to communicate complex ideas with each other, there have existed "snake oil salesmen", people trying to sell other people panaceas, miracle cures for a wide range (if not all) diseases. All the way from very early prehistoric times to this day. We may often think of these "miracle cures" to just be a thing of the past, but they are very alive and well to this very day. In fact, thanks to the Internet they are going stronger than ever. If you just do a bit of research you'll find tons and tons of people out there making wild claims about all kinds of substances and their purported ability to cure a wide range of diseases. Sometimes these substances are harmless so the only thing you'll lose is your money. Othertimes these substances can be outright dangerous and do real physical harm to you (such as bleach or black salve, both of which are being sold as "miracle cures"). And it hasn't

I'm not here talking about any particular President of the United States (although Joe Biden really is the biggest clown that has ever been the leader of any country; he's even a bigger clown than Justin Trudeau, which is quite an achievement). I'm talking about the role of the President. In Finland, when someone is elected the President of the country, it's not required but it's customary for him to leave his political party, if he belonged to one, and become unaffiliated for the duration of the presidency. This is a symbolic gesture done to indicate that the President of Finland represents all citizens equally and impartially, without taking political sides or favoring one political party over another. All citizens are equal in the eyes of the President, regardless of their political stances or any other opinions, and the role of the President is to represent all of them fairly and equally, and to drive everybody's interests and benefits. Not so in the United

A couple of years ago I wrote a (somewhat popular, according to view counts) blog post named " how to destroy a nation, step-by-step guide ". The first "step" that I listed there was: "Destroy the sense of national identity, culture and history." This is not just theoretical, a hypothesis, exaggeration, hyperbole, or metaphorical. This is literally and explicitly happening at this very moment, and has been happening for years. The far left in many western countries have been destroying, erasing, changing, distorting and bastardizing every single piece of western culture and history, one by one, at an even increasing rate. Historical statues are being destroyed, books are being banned and changed (in an eerily Orwellian manner), schoolbooks are being changed, historic figures are being "cancelled" and banned from being celebrated, remembered or even talked about, historic names, like street names, building names, institution names and so on are be

To make it absolutely clear before any confusion could settle in: I'm strongly and categorically against the death penalty, as a form of punishment for a crime. So, don't get me wrong. The reason why I'm against it is the same reason why I'm against abortion: If, from all the fundamental human rights, we had to choose the most important one, the one that goes above every other right, it would be the right to life. This is because it's the only right that, if infringed, cannot be reversed, cannot be remedied, cannot be compensated, cannot be made amends for. Every other human rights infringement can be fixed, alleviated or compensated for in some manner. This is the only one that's irreversible. And, on top of that, it's the greatest loss that a human being can suffer. But the thing is, even the death penalty is not as bad as abortion is. At least the death penalty (at least in countries with a modicum of civilization) is usually only applied to adult crimi

The modern radical far-left has in the recent decade or two succeeded in infiltrating and invading almost every single aspect of western society. There's almost no company, corporation, institution or even governmental agency that doesn't preach its tenets from the rooftops, often implementing absolutely draconian (and often self-destructive) policies. If there's one institution that one would think that they would have very hard time infiltrating and taking over, it would be the United States military forces. It's run by very strict old-fashioned men and is ruled by extremely strict rules, mandates and traditions that go back decades and even centuries. One would think that if there's one unshakeable rock that the extremist far-left cannot shake, it would be the military forces. Yet, somehow, and I literally have absolutely no idea how, in the past 10 or so years they succeeded in doing so. Very high-ranking army generals started making speeches about "diversi

Recently the far-leftist media (which includes almost all of the media) has been fawning over an incident that they so much crave (because of the sheer lack of them, even though they keep claiming year after year that such "hate incidents" are constant and daily). According to the narrative some pro-Palestine crowd was peacefully protesting somewhere in the United States when a truck driven by some islamophobic white supremacist rammed onto the crowd, in a clear case of terroristic hate crime. They made one mistake in their narrative, though. And that was actually releasing the video footage of the incident. Which, unsurprisingly, gave a rather different picture. For starters, the protest was, unsurprisingly, illegal because it was blocking traffic without permission, which is against the law. (But, as we have been seeing for the last 8 years or so, it appears that in most western countries, including the United States, committing crimes in the name of "protesting"

It is actually incredible how many hiring quotas there are in many (perhaps even most) western countries, even though at the same time discrimination and preferential treatment in hiring is very explicitly illegal (and in many such countries outright unconstitutional). If you live in a western country, chances are that if you dig enough you'll find all kinds of companies, businesses, institutions (both private and governmental) etc. openly engaging in hiring quotas. Not just under the hood hush-hush let's-keep-it-on-the-downlow, but as an open stated practice, with numbers and goals published every year or so. And, somehow, they don't get sued because of illegal discrimination in hiring, perhaps because of contrived legal loopholes or because the government outright seems to just not care. Anyway, putting all that aside, what is the justification for these hiring quotas, eg. gender-based hiring quotas? What is the underlying doctrine and belief system that justifies them, i

Because according to the modern far left white people are not allowed to do anything, and everything they do is wrong and racist, once again some random white restaurant owner has been randomly chosen by the far-leftist mob for fake outrage about the horrendous crime of it being a sushi restaurant. Which, obviously, white people (and only white people, of course) are not allowed to own and operate. Take for example these tweets by a very popular and follower race hustler, someone who calls herself "Queer Latifah": Putting aside the racism against white people (which she most probably would gladly and openly embrace if asked), notice how, more subtly, she's being quite egregiously racist against Asian people. Sushi is a well-known Japanese dish with a long and rich history in Japan. If anybody were to "own" dishes (if we even accepted such a concept), it would be Japanese people. But she can't say that. Instead, she just bunches Japanese people in with all

Especially in the United Kingdom, but also to an increasing manner in other countries as well, for many months now there have been people who have nothing better to do with their lives than to pester other people calling themselves "stop oil" whose life mission seems to be to interfere as much as possible with traffic. Deliberately blocking traffic is a crime in pretty much all countries, and in many countries these "protesters" are quickly removed by the police. However, in some countries the police does pretty much nothing about them, and the United Kingdom is the absolute worst of the bunch. I kid you not, there is video footage out there where the "protesters" are blocking traffic in the UK while an ambulance on an emergency call is trying to pass, and a police officer politely asks the protests if they could perhaps move aside, and when the protesters refuse, said officer just accepts it and does nothing. And the scary thing is that nobody, absolutel

Consider that word, pride. Notice how the vast majority of people who could genuinely be proud of their own accomplishments and contributions to the betterment of society almost never want the adulation and recognition of the wider public. A fireman who risks his own life to save a child from a burning building could genuinely and arguably be proud of his accomplishment. Or a surgeon who performs a very difficult urgent surgery that saves someone's life. Or any of the other countless people in this world who either risk their own lives or use their knowledge, skill and experience to save other people's lives, or in other ways very prominently help other people. A scientist who makes a key discovery that, for example, leads to a cure of a very dangerous disease could genuinely be proud of his accomplishment. Or a scientist who develops a new technology that proves massively successful and beneficial to society. Or any of the other millions of people in this world who contribut

In the 20th century, especially its latter half, South Africa was one of the richest and most prosperous first-world countries in the world. Its economy, infrastructure and government were completely on par with (and in some aspects even surpassed) most of the richest western European countries. One could even say that South Africa was pretty much in essence a rich European country in Africa. There was, however, a rather serious human rights problem in the country: Apartheid. This was an extraordinarily strict and very strongly imposed separation between white people and black African people, started in about 1949, so much so that the vast, vast majority of the black population of South Africa not only lived in completely separate regions of the country (with very strict border control within the country), but these black regions tended to be extremely poor and pretty much in essence some of the worst third-world regions of the entire continent. While some of the wealth of the white ar

Jewish people as a whole just don't seem to be able to catch a break. Pretty much for their entire existence, save some periods of relative peace and independence, they have been persecuted, oppressed, marginalized and demonized by pretty much everybody. During their entire history they have been oppressed and demonized by different nations and rulers, and both by the far-right and the far-left (including what could be considered their historical equivalents). Nowadays they are still hated, maligned and demonized by the far-right (the actual far-right, not what the left is calling "far-right"), but for the most part Jews don't have much to worry about them because that side of the political spectrum has been relegated to a small fringe minority with little to no political nor social power. Nowadays the biggest dangers they face are the islamofascists and, quite ironically (or perhaps not), the modern far left. And it's precisely that last part that's the most

In recent years eco-protesting has become a fashion in many European countries, but is most prevalent and most disruptive in the United Kingdom, regularly blocking traffic (ironically increasing pollution in the process by causing traffic jams and disrupting the normal flow of traffic, causing cars to stay on the road and running for much longer than they would otherwise have) while the police does absolutely nothing to stop this lawbreaking (even in the UK deliberately blocking traffic is illegal, but apparently you can freely break the law if you are "protesting"). The one most prominent things that they are advocating for is stopping completely the import of fossil fuels and the use of internal combustion motor cars. Even if we took their side for a moment and assumed that was actually feasible in practice, they are still complete idiots and completely delusional. Why? Because even if they were successful in stopping all fossil fuel burning in the entire country (thus plum

In Canada, in this particular case more specifically in Ontario, grade school teacher candidates are required to pass (among many other things) an elementary math test. This is because grade school teachers may sometimes be required to teach particular subjects on a temporary basis even if it's not their particular field of expertise (due to eg. the actual teacher being sick and unable to attend.) Recently the Ontario government, more in particular the Ontario courts of law, struck down this math test requirement for grade school teachers. The reason? Because they argued that such a requirement is "racist". I'm not even kidding. And note that that was was the only test that was removed from the requirements for grade school teachers. According to them, requiring teachers to know grade school math is "racist" because certain ethnicities were failing these test in larger proportions than others. So what the Ontario government is essentially saying is that cer

During the 1980's and, especially, during the 1990's and later the "multiculturalists" (who became just modern far-leftists) made a lot of false or exaggerated claims in order to justify bringing in as many foreign people into the country as possible. Unfortunately their propaganda campaigns, which they have been running for several decades, have been so immensely successful that most people just believe those claims wholesale. Even people who aren't especially politically oriented (and might even be slightly against far-leftism) tend to believe them wholesale. Do you know what one of these biggest lies is, that most people just believe wholesale? That the decreasing birth rates in most western countries is some kind of looming impending catastrophe that is in dire need of a solution. You hear this all the time. I have friends who believe it wholesale. In other words, that the birth rates in our countries is too low, and this will mean a huge looming economic cris

Especially in the modern world there are tons and tons of men out there, who eg. make video content for YouTube and other video streaming platforms, who act in very exaggerated stereotypical "girly" ways . Many of them don't act like adult men, nor even like adult women, nor even like young boys. Note even like the average young girl. They behave like an absolute stereotype of a young coy "girly girl". Others might not behave in such an exaggerated manner, but still act in a more "girly" way that no normal adults (or even children) do. Do you know what I suddenly realized? Have you ever seen, eg. on YouTube videos, Twitch streams, or anywhere else, the polar opposite of this? In other words, women acting like stereotypical testosterone-fueled masculine macho-men? Deliberately trying to lower their voice pitch, acting like a "tough" macho, speaking and laughing like a stereotypical overly-masculine man? Such women might exist, but if they do,

During the past 10 or so years far-leftists have been pushing extremely strongly this narrative that we need "more representation" in video games, that "representation matters". They want to push this idea that people somehow feel excluded and marginalized if they can't see people with their own skin color or their own genitals in a video game. For anybody who has ever played any video games it should be extremely obvious how false this notion is. However, the far left has been pushing this notion so strongly that some people, including some video game developers, have started actually believing it. To them it has become truth by sheer repetition. The actual truth is that since as long as video games have existed, since the 1970's or so, there hasn't been a single person in this world who has played a video game and thought "I feel excluded and marginalized because this playable character doesn't look like me". Not one. (Sure, today there