What grinds my gears

If there is one thing that "triggers" an American police officer the most, it's if they signal a car to stop, and it doesn't immediately stop. Note that in most states this is indeed against the law, but it's just a misdemeanor. Not much worse than eg. refusing to show ID when lawfully required to do so. While it may technically speaking be a crime, it's a relatively small one, as it's just classified as a misdemeanor (assuming that the delay in stopping the car is not reckless and does not cause danger to anybody). Yet, even though it's just a misdemeanor, most American police officers immediately treat it like the driver is an extremely dangerous armed-to-the-teeth hardened criminal who is fleeing from a mass shooting scene where he killed ten civilians and twelve cops, with the car full of illegal hard drugs and stolen money. You might perhaps think that I'm exaggerating a bit there. I'm not. When the car finally stops, guns will usually be...

There's a saying, "salting the earth", which is a reference to the ancient Romans, who were in a long time war against Carthage, finally succeeding in attacking said city state and completely destroying it and, according to the claim, spreading salt all around the fields so that they would become infertile, ie. impossible to grow any crops on (and, thus, deliberately causing a famine to all peoples living around the city.) This "salting the earth" by the Romans has been considered a historical "fact" for at least a century. Turns out that it's just complete fiction. Turns out that there's literally zero historical evidence of it having happened. There are many writings by contemporary historians who describe the Roman invasion of Carthage in great detail, but none of them make even a remote mention of them spreading salt. Nothing. Historians also consider it a rather ludicrous idea. Back in ancient times salt was actually quite valuable. Perhap...

Continuing my previous blog post about "anti-frauditor" YouTube channels , where I express how I really can't understand why these people oppose so strongly what even the nicest and most professionally-behaving First Amendment auditors are doing (to the point that they outright cheer and celebrate when the auditor gets arrested, regardless of whether the arrest is lawful or not). As mentioned there, the largest of those channels have usually hundreds and hundreds (even thousands) of comments from people fully agreeing with the channel author, mocking and deriding the auditors and openly and loudly celebrating when the police arrests them. Do you know what's one particular type of commenter that baffles me the most? The citizen of another country writing things like "these things don't happen in my country", and "in my country the police would just arrest the guy and throw him in jail", etc. Always in the context of it somehow being a good thing...

So-called "First Amendment auditing" is the practice that some people in the United States engage in (and similar practice in some other countries), where someone goes with a camera to a public place or a publicly accessible area of a governmental building in order to see if his rights to film in public are respected by police officers and other government employees (as well as the occasional private guard). I could classify "First Amendment auditors" into three distinct categories (although, of course, the line between them can be blurry at times): The auditors who not only know and obey all the relevant laws, but always act very professionally, cordially and respectfully, never incite anything by themselves starting an encounter with someone (and thus only interact with other people if they engage first), and who maintain a calm, respectful and professional demeanor as far as possible when conversing with someone, be it a police officer, a governmental employee, o...

Or at least some conservatives, as it may be. You see, it's an extremely common sentiment among American conservatives that taxation is theft (their exact wording). Many of them think that taxes are unconstitutional and thus illegal. There even exists a movement of American conservatives who refuse to pay taxes for this exact reason. They think it's unconstitutional, illegal and thus just theft. Apparently these people have never actually read the Constitution of the United States, which they love so much. You see, Article I, Section 8, first paragraph says: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; I don't think it could be any clearer than that. The right for the government to collect taxes is not some kind of "loophole", or "reading bet...

A policewoman is driving down a road when she sees someone on the side of the road from behind, who looks from that perspective like maybe a 10-year-old girl. As this is highly unusual, the officer stops to see if the girl is perhaps lost or needs help. Turns out that it wasn't actually a 10-year-old girl, but just a small adult woman. Ah, so it was just a simple case of confusion. It wasn't actually a lone child, so there's nothing to do, especially since the woman says that she doesn't need any help. Just say goodbye and keep driving... Except that, of course, that's not what ends up happening. That's because American police officers have an ID fetish. They just need that ID in the same way as a drug addict needs his next fix. So, for no reason whatsoever (and against state laws), the police officer asks for the woman's ID. There was literally no reason for her to ask for it, as there was absolutely nothing suspicious whatsoever going on, but because Amer...

I have written many times in this blog how the far left loves to engage in the tactic of deciding on a particular sociopolitical point, and regardless of whether it's actually true and factual, they just repeat it over and over, again and again, for years and years. They just keep inserting the claim everywhere and repeating it, never letting it go. The goal of this is, of course, to make it true by repetition. It's classical tactic of: If you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes the truth. (In other words, when enough people start believing it to be true, it becomes so for all intents and purposes. It may end up in history books as a fact of history, even though in reality it's a complete distortion or fabrication.) To be fair, though (and I have to look at the other side too, else I would be intellectually dishonest), the same tactic is often used by the right, by the conservatives, as well. There are many examples, especially among the American conservatives, but one of...

Social engineering (often in the form of outright propaganda) has always been a thing, for as long as human societies have existed. However, it wasn't until the advent of world-wide television that social engineering became a global thing. The era of the internet boosted the possibilities a thousand-fold. Sometimes social engineering campaigns have achieved positive things. For example smoking has been on a steady decline over the past 30-40 years thanks to a massive world-wide anti-smoking social engineering campaign. (While it has never gone completely away, the trend is positive.) Not all social engineering campaigns have been that good, however. Some have caused a devastating amount of damage, to society, to people's health, or to the environment. The result of some social engineering campaigns, however, are much harder to ascertain (and prove) whether they have been positive or negative, and the effects may be much, much subtler and hard to accurately measure. I would like...

Consider how many cameras there are in modern cities and towns everywhere, all the time, everywhere. Security cameras (both government-owned and privately owned), traffic cameras, dash cameras, Google Earth cars, and in fact almost every single person nowadays carries around at least one camera capable of taking photos and video. And, on that last point, it's very common for people to use those cellphone cameras they carry around all the time. Yet, regardless of all these hundreds and hundreds of cameras all around us filming our every single move in public, put a person with an "old-fashioned" camera in his hand on a street filming, and suddenly many people start acting very strangely, especially at some places (such as many towns and cities in the United States). They don't mind the dozens of security cameras all around them, nor the dash cameras, nor people with cellphones taking photos and video... but for some reason if some guy is holding an old-f...

For the past couple of years there have been many youtube videos about recently uncovered scientific frauds. Most of these frauds are related to psychology and sociology papers, and a few of them are related to medicine and a few other subjects. Many of these frauds, especially those relating to psychology and sociology, consist of the author skewing or manipulating results, engaging in (demonstrably deliberate) selection bias, or just outright fabricating results out of thin air, in order to confirm a particular hypothesis (eg. related to how the average person behaves or thinks in a particular situation). Sometimes the paper might reference a survey that was never actually conducted, or it may present numbers that have been deliberately manipulated by the author. Sometimes the completely wrong conclusion is drawn from the provided data. Sometimes some data is just outright ignored in order to reach a particular conclusion. Sometimes there is no evidence that the data is based on an a...

I made previously a blog post about American police officers assaulting a completely peaceful innocent elderly man with such sheer brutality that he ended up paralyzed for life . After several years of court battles a settlement was finally agreed by the city, but absolutely nothing happened to the police officers (of course). Well, if you thought this was a unique incident, you would be absolutely wrong. It just keeps happening. In April of 2020 an elderly American war veteran was stopped and arrested by some police officers because of suspected driving-under-the-influence and a minor car accident. Apparently because the man didn't walk fast enough, the officer who was escorting him and demanding he walk faster decided to engage in some good old police brutality, and instead of taking him to the police car where he was originally intending to escort him, he tackled the man onto the ground and he and another police officer proceeded to not only berate him verbally but literally inf...

The United States is a rather unique country in the world in that, to my knowledge, it's pretty much the only country, at least when considering all free democratic countries, where the police just routinely and automatically demand ID from pretty much everybody they encounter and interact with. And this is not restricted to just some states, or some parts of the country: It's exactly the same everywhere in the gigantic country, regardless of state, regardless of local culture, regardless of which political party is running the state or the city where it's happening. When the situation is such that demanding ID (at the threat of arrest) cannot be done lawfully (because the person is not suspected of any crime), in a small minority of cases the police officer might ask only once and perhaps even outright say that he's just asking consensually and that it's completely ok if the person refuses. However, in the vast, vast majority of such cases the officer will keep ins...

Continuing from my previous blog post about this subject, where I discussed how the far left trying to completely revamp the schooling system (because they think that the traditional way of running primary schools is antiquated, oppressive and racist) only leads to complete failure, where students don't learn anything and fail all tests. Another good example of this is, of course, how many of the cities in the United States, which are being governed by far-leftists, are failing catastrophically. Seriously, there are several such cities in the country where, if you look at current photographs and videos of, you would be forgiven for thinking that they are from some kind of war-torn impoverished country, or some other country devastated by a war (like Ukraine). Streets and parks full of garbage, rubble filth, excrement and drug needles, hundreds if not thousands of homeless people living in tents along streets and in parks, hundreds and hundreds of cars that have been completely des...

Some far-leftist feminists have tried their hardest to be comedians. Pretty much invariably they fail . They seem to be unable to understand what makes comedy work, what makes it funny. Mockery is not funny. Insulting your audience in a serious straightforward manner is not funny. Telling some event in your life in a manner like you were having a serious talk with a friend or a therapist is not funny (especially if there is no twist nor punchline). Making political statements without any sort of twist or punchline is not funny. Acting like a little child for no rhyme or reason is not funny (yes, this is a real example; I didn't invent it.) Being whiny about yourself is not funny; nobody likes whiners. Seriously complaining about stuff without it having some kind of humorous twist is not funny; nobody likes whiners. A very similar situation is the case with leftist memes: They tend to be unfunny and cringey, and the reason is very similar: Leftists just can't understand humor, a...

Neil DeGrasse Tyson has for several decades now been one of the most famous and best popularizers of science and scientific thinking. He is extremely smart and eloquent, and can explain scientific concepts in a very clear and understandable but non-condescending non-patronizing way. Listening to him explain something eg. about astrophysics (which is his field of expertise) is a delight. For the longest time he used to be a really cool guy and, to my knowledge, mostly stayed out of politics. (He may have well expressed politically polarizing opinions over the years, but nothing that would have been so notorious as to grab my attention and knowledge.) But, it seems, the far-leftist ideology has finally ensnared also him so deeply that he just couldn't help himself but to publish a video where he defends "the gender spectrum" and how "chromosomes do not tell one's gender", and how "you can feel 20% male and 80% female today" and yada yada yada. In tha...

About five years ago (as of writing this) one LeBron James, a professional basketball player, and notorious (and infamous) far-leftist activist, created a grade school that uses a different approach at teaching. Its stated purpose is to help those kids who are "marginalized", or in "typically marginalized" ethnic groups, and its novel approach at teaching is supposed to help them better than normal public school, in order to learn and become successful (measured by, among other things, standardized tests that test student proficiency and knowledge.) Needless to say, "equity" is the key (buzz)word in the school in question. Unsurprisingly, five years ago the leftist media hailed the opening of this school as one of the greatest things since sliced bread. What a novel new way to run a school and help "marginalized" children, who usually fall under the cracks in the machine of the normal public school system. So now, five years later, how are the st...