What grinds my gears

Quentin Tarantino is one of the best-known film directors in the world. He is well known for his peculiar and distinctive style. While this style varies from movie to movie, almost every single one of them still has this "tarantinoesque" touch to them, which is almost unique to him. His movies are notorious for often containing very long and complex dialogue scenes (where two or more characters do nothing but talk to each other) which are often so well-written that it's incredibly engaging and interesting, and one rarely gets bored. Where your typical movie might have a group of people have a conversation for half a minute before the scene changes completely to something else (or, sometimes, the violence begins), Tarantino's movies will often have the conversation going on for 10 minutes and even more. And not one moment of it is usually boring. Yet, regardless of these long dialogue sequences, which there usually are a few throughout the movie, most of his movies als...

For something like 20 years now the (mostly American) far left has been pushing their ideology and agenda into society at full force, using all kinds of tactics and strategies (starting with the invasion of all universities, which is actually a brilliant move, credit where credit is due. Although that most probably was not their idea originally, as it was an idea originally pushed by Soviet propagandists.) One of the strongest and most successful tactics, which they have been pushing more and more strongly over the decades, is the idea that all pieces of media, especially video games, absolutely require "representation" (of minorities, etc.) They were talking about this 15 years ago, and they are still talking about it today, more strongly than ever. And that's how they have been successful in injecting their politics and social engineering into more and more big-budget games. (The latest victim of this agenda is the currently infamous Dragon Age: Veil Guard , with all th...

Matt Walsh's latest movie, "Am I Racist", has brought up in full force something that the American left has been very actively engaging in for over a decade now: Strong gatekeeping of their own members. In particular, it's the archetypal religious cult tactic of stopping cult members from listening, reading or watching any material that's not approved by the cult, especially material that's critical of the cult. Not only are the cult members forbidden from ever engaging with such material, but they are outright fear-mongered into not doing so. In many cases it's not just "you shouldn't be reading that material", it's outright "you absolutely must not read such material, it's extremely dangerous for you and for the cult, it could literally cost you your salvation." In most such cults, including the cult of modern far-leftism, this mentality also induces as a side effect a strong mentality of gatekeeping: In other words, cult...

Because getting huge amounts of views on YouTube is actually quite profitable (if your channel can be monetized), it's no surprising that there are hundreds and hundreds of tactics that people use to try to get as many views as possible. Some of these tactics are completely legit, with the author trying to put as much effort as possible into making high-quality enjoyable popular videos. Other tactics are outright scams (even if they technically speaking don't break the terms of service.) Then there are the borderline ones. One of the borderline tactics I have seen, which is a quite annoying form of clickbait, is used by several channels that upload "recaps" of movies. What's so "clickbaity" about them? The fact that the title of the video contains an enticing summary of what the movie is about, in a manner that picks up the curiosity and interest of people, but nowhere in the title, and usually not even in the video's description, is the name of the ...

You know when someone makes a very predictable joke or quip about something relating to someone, a quip that hundreds and hundreds of other people have already made because it's such an obvious and lazy quip to make, and you respond with a sighing "like I haven't heard that one before"? Well, multiply that by a thousand when it comes to the title of Matt Walsh's latest movie, "Am I Racist?" You will find thousands, tens of thousands, probably literally hundreds of thousands of leftists answering that question with "yes". Find any youtube video about the movie, any social media post, any article with comments enabled, if it's made by a far-leftist and is critical of the movie, the comment section will be absolutely flooded with people answering "yes" to the question posed by the movie title. It's literally like they are robots repeating the same thing over and over and over. One can't but just release a huge "sigh...

YouTube has for quite many years had some sort of AI automoderating the comment section of all videos, automatically removing content that it deems infringing or dangerous in some manner (such as containing URLs to dubious websites). In principle that's all well and good. It avoids YouTube being flooded by spammers and scammers, which would most certainly happen if it weren't for this automoderation. The problem is that the automoderation AI is broken, and will often remove comments that have absolutely nothing infringing about them. What's worst is that it does this completely silently, without notifying you in any way. Chances are that if you are a prolific youtube comment writer, a good chunk of your comments have been autoremoved by the AI, and you didn't even notice. (That's because when you submit the comment, it will show as if it were successfully submitted. Which it probably was. However, it will not show if it gets autoremoved a couple of seconds later, un...

In the modern American (and some other countries) world, a new buzzword has been invented and pushed at full force: "DEI". It supposedly stands for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. A much more apt expansion would be: Discrimination, Exclusion, Indoctrination. And I'm 100% serious with those words. This is not just name-calling, throwing random insults, being facetious, choosing random negative words that just happen to match the acronym. I'm serious. The "DEI" movement is absolutely about discrimination, such as discrimination in hiring: It promotes looking at the sex, race and other characteristics of applicants, and giving preferential treatment to some people, and discriminating against others, based on those inconsequential qualities. It promotes giving preferential treatment eg. in promotions based on those qualities. In other words, it is discrimination, plain and simple. The "DEI" movement is absolutely about exclusion: Certain people, especial...

There are multitudes of ways in which American police officers trample on people's constitutional rights. They demand ID when they don't have the legal right to do so, they detain people in situations (and for longer periods of time) where they don't have the legal right to do so, they commit assault and battery when they don't have a legal reasonable reason to do so, they enter private homes illegally, they prolong traffic stops for much longer than they have the legal right to, and so on and so forth. The list is endless. One form of rights violation that gets very little attention, though, is using an "inventory search" as an excuse to illegally search the car of a driver they have arrested, for the purposes of trying to find anything illegal in the car, for extra charges. An "inventory search" of a car is a legit thing in the United States. However, there are very specific laws governing it, and these have been affirmed several times by courts. A...

I have been watching for some days a Twitch stream that broadcasts sumo wrestling (both live and replays), as it seems interesting. Unsurprisingly, viewers in the stream chat have lots of questions about sumo, about what's happening in the stream. There's a bot in that chat that has a huge amount of fact commands: for almost any question that you might think of about sumo it's likely there's already an answer programmed in the bot, which people can make it say. One common question I saw several times was about why the sumo ring is elevated: After all, it's very common for a wrestlers to violently push the other wrestler out of the ring, and quite often that other wrestler falls off the edge to the floor below, and that seems quite dangerous. I recently saw someone asking that very question. And it seems quite a genuine and legit question to ask. Why is the ring platform elevated? It seems a bit dangerous. That's one question I had never seen being responded with...

Remember that time, something like ten-or-so years ago, when American far-leftists, starting from university students, were strongly instructed to snap their fingers instead of clapping in order to show approval? Because, apparently, hand clapping is "triggering" while, apparently, finger-snapping is not. Up until it actually was. Unsurprisingly some years later far-leftists were forbidden from finger-snapping and were instructed to use "jazz hands" instead (although you could still see the stupid finger-snapping thing being used even several years after that.) That was, of course, by far not the only such incident of behavioral control among the American far left (and, obviously, spread to many other western countries like a cancer.) There are tons and tons of examples. "You can't do this", "you have to do this", "you can't use these words", "you have to use these words", etc. etc. Even more than physical behavior the...

Some people, especially many American conservatives, claim that "the United States is not a democracy, it's a constitutional republic." The problem with that statement is that it's essentially a category error. That's because "democracy" is an umbrella term that covers a variety of governmental systems, and "constitutional republic" is a slightly narrower term that's one of those systems. In other words, the United States is a constitutional republic and a democracy, because a constitutional republic is a form of democracy. Saying that "the US is not a democracy, it's a constitutional republic" is like saying "cheddar is not food, it's a cheese". Cheddar is both a food and a cheese, because cheeses are food. The confusion that most of these people have is that they think that "democracy" is a synonym for "direct democracy", in other words, a form of government where every single law and sta...

Some time ago I wrote a blog post about a gaming-related forum I have actively participated in for several years now, and how there are some other participants there who really love to virtue-signal about their pronouns and their "trans" status. It sometimes becomes so obnoxious that I felt the need to write a bit more about it. There are at least three or four people there who openly identify themselves as " lesbian trans-women ". In other words, completely normal men who are attracted to women, but who get kicks and adulation by claiming that they are "lesbian trans-women". Mind you, those people, and other "lesbian" and "trans" people in that real-time discussion forum, are the only ones who I have ever seen, during my several years there, talk about their personal lives to this level of detail. I literally do not know the marital or relationship status of any other person in that forum, nor do I know anything at all about their ...

Candace Owens, who is a rather notorious black woman who is an American conservative activist, said in a recent interview that if she were a man running a company, she would not hire a single woman. Her argument for this is that hiring women comes with an enormous amount of sociopolitical drawbacks and baggage, and no benefits to compensate for them. More particularly, when men interact with each other for example at a workplace, they can be pretty chill and relaxed with each other. In general men don't really need to fear "insulting" other men by simply casually talking with them and interacting with them, even making comments that go beyond pure professional topics related to their work. However, when men interact with women at the workplace they always need to be walking on eggshells, especially at certain places: They need to always be extremely careful about what they say and do, and even then it might not even help, no matter how careful they are. Even a very simple...

A quite big YouTuber who goes by the nickname "Nikocado Avocado" has been quite controversial over the years, mostly caused by his self-destructive behavior, with some of his fans defending him while others have criticized him for said behavior, how he is ruining his own life and giving a bad example to others. Many years ago he was a very skinny and healthy-looking guy doing random YouTube videos, who one day tried making a so-called "mukbang" video, which is a video were the author just eats an enormous amount of (usually very unhealthy) food. To his surprise that video got millions of views, way more than the vast majority of his other videos. So he did it again, and again, and again... And you can guess where it went: He became addicted, both to food and to making these videos. Over the years his weight doubled, if not even tripled, and he started suffering from all kinds of conditions due to his weight and his overeating. And, unsurprisingly, once you get addic...

A friend of mine told a story about when he was in grade school, in a conversation about learning to play instruments, and music teaching in primary school. A girl in the same school had brought an accordion to music class, because her father played one and she thought it would be a nice way to learn and participate. And this wasn't some kind of toy accordion. It was the real deal, a full-on expensive instrument. Because the accordion was so heavy and cumbersome to carry, she kept it stored in the music classroom. You might guess where this is going. One day it turned out that someone had vandalized the instrument, poking holes all over it with a pen. Not only was she devastated, it was also a quite expensive instrument, so it wasn't a small deal. This caused a huge ruckus in the school, but the culprit was never found nor came forward. The sad thing about these things is that while we find such things infuriating and sad, most of us don't find it surprising. Vandalism, des...

Imagine that you are, let's say, the treasurer of a large corporation, and you start embezzling some of the company's money into your own pockets, which is of course highly illegal. Now imagine that you get caught doing it, but you get away with your crime by simply quitting your position in that company. That's it. You quit, and you get away with your crime. Neither the company itself nor the government will pursue further. You don't get put on trial, you don't get any conviction. At most, perhaps some individual person could try to sue you, but it's up to them. Or imagine if you are a nurse in a large hospital, and you start giving poison to patients under your care, and when you are find out, you just quit your position and get away with it: No lawsuits, no trials, no punishment. Both the hospital and the government would stop doing anything about your crime at the moment you quit, and simply and purely because you quit. Would that make any kind of sense? Obv...