What grinds my gears

The "Stop Killing Games" initiative has become very notable in that it's a grassroots movement started by one single random youtuber with the goal of making a petition to the EU parliament, which apparently (and hopefully) has got enough signatures that it will force said parliament to discuss and do something about it. It has been so notable that it even has got mainstream media coverage in several countries. People are celebrating that the one million signatures threshold has been passed, and they are acting as if this was some kind of victory. I myself am a bit more pessimistic than that. And that's because I know how politicians operate, and particularly how the criminal pundits in the EU operate, when it comes to the "rights" of giant megacorporations. I fear that even if a million of those signatures are legit, and thus the petition is forced to be discussed in the EU parliament, they will just discuss it for five minutes and then unceremoniously vote ...

From time to time you may read or hear of a news story, where a citizen was somehow mistreated by governmental officials or the police, the citizen sued and won the case, and got compensation (or, for example, was reinstated if the injustice was firing him from his position, or similar.) Likewise in many countries, very prominently in the United States, it's pretty much a daily occurrence that someone gets charged by the police, and the charges are then dropped and the case dismissed in court because of no legal basis to the charges. What you extremely rarely, if ever, hear in these situations is  legal consequences  to the government officials who committed the (often illegal) injustice towards the citizen. An overzealous far-leftist city council, or governmental institution, or state-funded school or university, or any of the other myriads of government-run or government-funded institutions, may for example fire an employee who they disagree with politically. If the firing w...

1) The so-called "modern audience" is not your customerbase. The "modern audience" is not the segment of the population that buys your game. Placating to the "modern audience" at the expense of gamers is only alienating the people who actually buy your games. 2) People buy and play video games as a form of escapism, to take a break from the stresses of real life. They don't play video games in order to be lectured about sociopolitics. They most particularly do not play video games in order to be lectured about far-leftist ideology. People see and don't like propaganda in their games. 3) People do not care one iota about being "represented" in video games. When people play, say, a Mario game, they don't think "I am Mario, this Mario character here represents me, he is me personified." When people play a Tomb Raider game they don't think "I am Lara Croft, she represents me." In fact, when it comes to games with e...

For a few decades now there has been a somewhat fringe but not absolutely insignificant movement that claims that raw food is somehow healthier, better and "more natural" than cooked food. The notion is that raw food is more nutritious and healthier, while cooking makes food less nutritious and even detrimental to one's health. This taps strongly on the so-called "naturalistic fallacy": In other words, the notion that things that are perceived as "more natural", less changed by artificial human actions, is better and healthier. Don't get me wrong, there is  some  validity to that notion when it comes to food, in the extreme opposite end of the spectrum: In other words, ultra-processed food is genuinely less healthy than less-processed food. This is a very known fact, and nutritionists and the medical community in general have been warning about this for decades now. Ultra-processed food tends to have less nutrients and more artificial additives (su...

Particularly in the United States, probably not a single day goes by without there being at a minimum a dozen protests by far-leftist radicals around the country, almost all of them breaking the law in on way or another (which law enforcement just ignores, obviously, because there's some kind of very strange two-tiered law enforcement system in the country.) And this has been going on for over 10 years now. It  might  be that during Biden's presidency there  might  have been a few days during those four years that there were no protests anywhere in the country, but even that's unlikely. The constant daily protesting has a rather unintended side-effect that the far-leftist protesters are completely oblivious to: When protests are a daily occurrence, it dilutes their effectiveness. For the longest time it used to be that protests were effective because of the amount of attention that they got. When they were unusual, people paid attention to them. They got press covera...

Religions, cults and radical ideologies oftentimes use deceitful subterfuge when conversing with people in order to try to trick them and perhaps convert them into the ideology. The tactic is: Rather than directly blurt out the doctrine they are trying to convince the other person of, they start with statements and questions that are easy to agree with, and which touch on beliefs of the ideology. So they will have a half-hour conversation with the person, constantly making easy-to-agree statements and asking subtly leading questions that most people will answer in a way that conforms to the ideology (at least superficially), and the conversation will slowly veer deeper and deeper into the topics of the ideology, slowly luring the person into it. After all if the person has been agreeing with everything for half an hour, and everything seems to be ideologically very comfortable and agreeable, and when one has built a sort of social connection with the other person, it's then natural...

Martin Luther King, in his world-famous landmark inspirational speech in 1963 quite famously said: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!" This short paragraph has become absolutely iconic, and is not just one of the most famous utterances in history, but arguably one of the most influential and important ones as well, summarizing the most important core concepts of the fair and equal treatment of people in society. One of the best ideas ever expressed in one of the most important speeches in the history of humanity. For 50 years the American left, the "liberals", the Democrats, had absolutely no problems with this idea, and fully embraced, promoted and promulgated it. They constantly referred to it as one of the most fundamental concepts and cornerstones of an equal and fair constitutional justice system and socie...

The initial police report of the incident said that a traffic cop observed a car "driving erratically", signaled it to stop, after which the driver exited the car and charged at the cop while wielding a knife. Thus, the police officer, fearing for his life, had no choice but to shoot him. ("Fearing for his life" explicitly stated in the report.) Later, when the bodycam footage and security camera footage from a nearby building were released, it turned out that the entire report was a huge lie. The driver never exited his car. He didn't even so much as open the car's door. The cop didn't shoot at someone charging at him with a knife: He ran to the car and started shooting with his service pistol through the closed window. And no, it's not like the cop approached the car, noticed the person inside perhaps wielding some weapon, and then took his pistol and started shooting. No, the cop immediately took out his pistol when he exited his patrol car, point...

Being able to create and publish independent third-party reviews of products made by some person or company is one of the most fundamental core features of the principle of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and is pretty much universally guaranteed with extremely strong protections in the vast majority if not all jurisdictions that operate under constitutional rights and freedoms. In many countries this right to review products is explicitly enshrined in law, in others it's a standard interpretation of the Constitution and consumer rights laws by courts. The main goal of independent reviews of products being a strongly protected right is, of course, for the benefit of customers: Third-party reviews are a very important part of purchasing decision making, and most free countries guarantee and protect this. Consumers have the right to know the details of products they are thinking of purchasing, before purchasing them, and only independent third-parties are qualified to pub...

The game Death Stranding 2 is getting really high review scores both from regular gamers and from most journalists. There's one significant outlier, though: GameSpot gave the game just a 7 out of 10, which is the lowest it has got from such a publication. The reason? The woke game journalist who wrote the review considers the game "sexist" and "misogynist". The big irony here is that, inadvertently, this actually works as an advertisement for the game: It immediately made  me  more interested in the game, and more likely to consider purchasing it at full price. If a "woke" professional game journalist calls a game names, it immediately makes the game more interesting, it immediately raises interest in finding out more about the game. So it works in the exact opposite way than the journo intended. I would like to once again repeat a message I have been writing to any professional video game journalists who might be reading this: Your profession is obsol...

For about a decade now, whenever the American far-leftist mainstream media, far-leftist politicians, and other far-leftist political commentators and influencers make a claim about their political opposition, if you just assume it to be a complete fabrication, distortion or outright lie, overwhelming chances are that you will be right . Making a comprehensive list of all the lies and distortions made by them, which can be absolutely proven to be false, over the past decade would make quite a long list indeed. You could probably write an entire door-stopper encyclopedia about it. But here I would like to write about one particular recent incident: Some time ago a man named Abrego Garcia was deported to his home country of El Salvador. The mainstream media and, thus, the entire far-leftist mob, painted a very tragic picture of the situation. According to them, he was a completely innocent family man, married and a father of two, who had done absolutely nothing wrong, and who had been dep...

In common parlance a "tryhard" is someone who, well, tries really hard to be "cool", to be one of the "cool kids", to be popular, to follow the fashions, to fit in, to get into the social circles of the "cool" people, to get validation and admiration from others, and usually does it in such an obvious and transparent "trying-too-hard" way that it's outright cringe. Or, similarly, someone who tries really hard to become popular and to succeed as a content creator, for example on online video and streaming platforms, but just doesn't really have the talent for it, and it just ends up being awkward and cringe. They are just trying very very hard to do or become something they don't really have the natural talent for, and it just seeps through and can quite clearly be seen, and it's often awkward and cringe. Or just boring. The effort may be there, but not the required talent. Recently I played the quite criticized game  Sui...

"Terrorism" is defined as violence or threats of violence for political purposes. Well, consider what the American left, the American Democrats, have become during the last 10 or so years: Every single time that they don't get what they want, every single time that they lose an election, every single time a governing body decides or passes a law that they don't like, how do they react? With violence, of course. By this point it has become normalized among the American left. Rioting, vandalism, destruction of property, arson, assault. It is literally happening every single day, without exception, in the United States, for the most random of things. By this point it isn't even if they don't get what they want, or they lose an election, or some judicial system makes a decision or passes a law that they don't like: By this point they are outright  fabricating  reasons to become violent. Any single minor issue that they come up with, they will use as an excuse,...

So this South African game developer company by the name Nyamakop, owned by Africans, run by Africans, staffed by Africans, subsidized by the South African government, wanted to create a video game 100% by Africans, showcasing and bringing forth African people and African culture, for the entire world to appreciate and learn. So what kind of game did they come up with? Is it, perhaps, some kind of point&click game, or an adventure game, or an open world game, where you travel through different cities, towns, villages and African tribes to learn about their culture, perhaps doing some side quests along the way? Perhaps the African people, including the playable protagonists, are depicted as amicable, friendly, honest, down-to-earth, noble and wise, imparting their wisdom, their knowledge and their culture to the player? Something like that? Nope. The homogeneous all-black cast of playable characters consists of, get this: Thieves. I am literally facepalming right now, and I'm no...

The government of the United Kingdom just voted to legalize abortion all the way up to just prior to birth. So yes: Killing a baby one day after birth is murder, but killing a baby one day before birth is completely legal. What exactly is the difference? This means that the United Kingdom has officially become a country where infanticide is legal. And the most horrendous thing is that a lot of people are  celebrating  this, as if murdering children was some kind of human right, and social progress. The fundamental human right to life for the baby be damned. To the United Kingdom government and every single person who celebrates this and thinks that this is some kind of "human right" and a good thing: You absolutely disgust me. You are monsters, and I want to puke. I wish there was a hell, so that you would burn forever in the deepest pits of it, for supporting and engaging in the murder of innocent children. And then you call people who oppose you and oppose this "Nazis...

Far-leftists in the United States are protesting deportations of illegal immigrants. Because of course they do. They have been told to protest it, so they obey like sheep. Well, I have something shocking to tell them: Every single country in the world deports people. Without exceptions. Yeah, I know, shocking, isn't it? And yes, every single country that exists in this world deports people from their lands, constantly, without exceptions. Even the most far-leftist liberal open-borders "all immigrants welcome" European countries, like Canada, the UK, Germany, Sweden and so on, deport people. (They might not deport even nearly as many as they should, but they nevertheless do.) Nobody has ever considered deporting people who have no right to be in a country to be some kind of crime against humanity. Even the cringiest far-leftists countries do it all the time. Canada does it all the time. Mexico does it all the time. The United Kingdom does it all the time. Name any country ...

The United States is a country where the police will arrest you for merely not showing ID, even in situations where they don't have the legal right to demand ID. Here is yet another example, from literally thousands and thousands I could list. At the same time you can have people attacking and damaging governmental property, like government-owned cars, in direct view of law enforcement, and those cops... just shove the attackers aside but make no arrests, as seen here . That's right: These people directly and very illegally block traffic and attack and even outright damage governmental cars (with the cops even audibly acknowledging in the video that the car was damaged), in direct view of the police. So much in direct view that the cops actually intervene by... just pushing them aside, but not arresting them. So you are telling me that not complying with an unlawful demand to show ID is such a heinous crime that you'll get arrested, but if you damage cars and illegally blo...

In a small American town six police officers in several squad cars are searching for a suspect reported to be at the grocery store of a gas station. From the body camera footage of one of the officers he spots the suspect, parks his squad car, exits it, and then runs towards the suspect, and shouts to him to get on the ground. The suspect is confused for a couple of seconds but then goes onto the ground. Several police officers run onto the scene. However, the cop, who probably has an IQ approaching that of a house plant, had not put his squad car in park, but actually in reverse. Said car starts rolling backwards and onto the cops and the suspects. One of the other cops gets bumped by the car, but the car completely runs over the suspect, who ends up under the car, screaming in pain. Luckily the car has stopped, but at least one of the wheels has run over the suspect. What do the cops do at this point? Do they make sure not to move the man, who might possibly have a severe injury, suc...

The United States is the pinnacle and epitome of freedom and free-market capitalism, where private ownership of property is sacrosanct, and heavily protected by the Constitution and multitudes of laws... except when the government can just steal your property, just like that, just like it were a full-on Communist government. And you have absolutely no recourse against it. A civil engineer purchases a piece of land from a small town in South Caroline. He does everything by the book, conforms to all laws, and even consults with all authorities in the town to get all papers and permits, and everything strictly by the book. He now owns that piece of land. The problem? The nearby townspeople don't want him to own that land nor build anything on it, so they complain and complain and complain to the town council. Said council ends up agreeing with them. But what can they do? The guy legally owns that land. There's nothing they can legally do to stop him from building anything he wants...

Many people present a lot of criticism against YouTube because of their practices, particularly related to demonetization of videos. Video creators lament and hate that they have to jump through unclear undisclosed hoops in order to try to not get their videos demonetized, having to try to guess what they can and can't say and show in their videos, and how difficult it is to contest automatic demonetization by the AI that's working behind the scenes. And, especially, how hard it is to restore a non-infringing video that gets falsely restricted or even removed. The DMCA and copyright strike system also gets a huge amount of criticism and backlash. However, I would like to, once again, offer a different perspective and actually  praise  YouTube. I have written about this very topic a couple of times before, but I think it deserves repeating. This is because considering the current political climate, and particularly considering how leftist Google as a company is, it's actuall...

There is this very strange and pervasive notion among far-leftist activists that gamers just hate female playable characters in video games, that they don't want women protagonists in their games and, particularly, they don't want to play them. Take these posts by a far-leftist bigot, who is actually working for the game developer studio The Initiative:   "If adding female protagonists to video games is all it takes to make the worst people you've ever met not want to play them, we should add female protagonists to every game." Yet, what happens when a game like Stellar Blade is published, which has a  very  female protagonist and playable character? Enormous success. What happens when the PlayStation exclusivity deal ends and it's published for PC on Steam? It becomes the fastest-selling game published by Sony on that platform ever, with sales numbers and player counts that dwarf many recent (and more infamous) western triple-A titles. And how do the leftist ...

Recently a big bunch of absolutely clueless and self-entitled white westerners went to Egypt in order to walk from there to Gaza in what they called "Global March to Gaza", as some kind of show of support and aid, or something. To their big surprise they found out that the Egyptian government was having none of it. They were stopped at the border between Egypt and Gaza (which, perhaps ironically from an American perspective, has an enormous impassable border wall), their passports were confiscated, and (at least as of writing this blog post) they are all being deported from Egypt back to their own countries. Turns out you don't just walk through that border as if it were nothing. Also turns out that Egypt is not some kind of liberal western country where people can move in and out however they want, and turns out that they have no qualms about deporting people from the country (oh, the irony.) It also turns out that Egypt has had its history with Gaza and the Palestinian...

Flat-earthers have this common argument and objection that according to the "globe model" Earth's atmosphere is a big bunch of gas adjacent to a vacuum, which according to them must mean that the atmosphere should quickly expand to this vacuum of space until there's nothing left on the Earth. Ok, let me explain why the Earth has an atmosphere and why it doesn't escape to space. You agree that objects that have mass fall down towards the surface of the Earth, don't you? This is, of course, trivially observable. You might not want to call that phenomenon "gravity" (for a reason that nobody, not even you, can understand), and instead you want to call it "buoyancy". But whatever you want to call it, it's undeniable that the phenomenon exists: Objects that have mass fall towards the ground. If the substance is fluid enough, it might form layers with the least dense parts on the top and most dense at the bottom, but at its own density level t...

Many people who are currently (as of writing this) rioting in Los Angeles are claiming that they want to return the land to its indigenous people. And who are these "indigenous people"? Well, Mexicans, of course! They pretend that Los Angeles belonged to Mexico before it lost it to the United States, and thus the United States "stole" the land from Mexico. This is completely hilarious because they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. The area where current Los Angeles resides was originally inhabited by the Tongva people (who likely invaded the land from an even older civilization, which likely invaded it from an even older civilization and so on and so forth, but that's not here nor there.) Spain conquered the area and established a settlement there called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, which is considered the beginning of the city. This happened in 1781. Mexico didn't even exist in 1781. Mexico was founded in 1821. Bef...

During the Stone Age of Unix, a windowing system was developed that could be run on Unix systems that would allow running programs with graphical interfaces similar to those of the Macintosh, AmigaOS and (eventually) Windows. The original system called "X Window System", or simply "X", and sometimes "X<version number>" with version 11 being the last one that was developed using that system (and thus "X11" became pretty much synonymous with the original "X Window System".) Since that version 11 was developed in 1987, and further development of the system pretty much halted, alternative implementations started appearing, particularly for Linux and other more modern Unix-based systems (such as BSD). One that gained a lot of popularity during the earlier years of Linux was called Xorg, which was an independent implementation of the X Window System API and protocol. The main developer and "owner" of sorts (although that term ...

Democracy is one of the greatest things that humanity has ever invented. It has brought peace and prosperity to most of the world. It has allowed many countries to become extremely rich, with very low crime rates and where people don't need to live in poverty and have very high quality of life, while at the same time preserving maximal freedom for the citizens: Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of movement, freedom to choose your career path as you wish. In a democratic country the government belongs to the people, not some dictators or some aristocratic elite: The government is by the people, from among the people, for the people. And, most importantly, it cycles constantly. This is important because if at any given moment the government starts working against the people and do detrimental things to the country, the people have the power to elect a new government that will set things right. And what's absolutely brilliant about this system is that it's compl...

Dogs are used all the time to find drugs, for example at some airports. They are quite effective at it thanks to their amazing sense of smell, and training. Such dogs are also used in some countries, particularly in the United States, to sniff for drugs during traffic stops where the cops suspect there might be some in the car. Problem is: This is 100% prone to abuse in order to illegally search people's cars. (There is only one fetish that American cops have that's stronger than searching people's cars. And that is, of course, getting people's IDs. Of course during traffic stops they already got their ID fix, but nothing gets the party going like following that with an illegal search of the suspect's car.) There are several studies that show that these police dogs are actually surprisingly ineffective and unreliable when it comes to smelling drugs from the outside of cars during traffic stops, with a significant amount of false positives and negatives. However, tha...

In most western countries the mainstream media, the press, has become pretty much a propaganda machine for the far-leftist ideology. However, almost nowhere else has this become as bad as in the United States: For over eight years now the mainstream media in that country has stopped being "the press" and become a political activist organization that willingly acts as a propaganda mouthpiece for their preferred political party. Not just their political ideology, but outright political party. And they lie constantly. They lie, and lie, and lie, non-stop, in order to attack the other political party, and to defend their own. This isn't inconsequential. Still to this day the mainstream media, the press, has a huge amount of influence on citizens, on the people: They shape the public perception of things, they affect voting patterns (at all levels of society), they affect opinions, they affect behavior, they even cause criminal behavior. The main problem in the United States (...

Currently there is a  bona fide  insurrection going on in Los Angeles, in the United States, with thousands and thousands of rioters burning cars, throwing rocks at cars (very much including police cars) from bridges and elsewhere, massive vandalism and property destruction, massive looting, massive amount of arson, and literally billions of dollars of property damage. And the rioters are quite clear about what they want: They want California to become part of Mexico. (Yes, they are being absolutely delusional, but hey, you can never expect rational thought from far-leftists.) Unsurprisingly, the leftist media in the United States (which is the vast majority of the media), are following the "mostly peaceful protest" meme to a T: They are repeating over and over how these are "peaceful protests". They don't talk about the rioting, they don't talk about the arson, destruction of property and looting, they don't talk about this being a  bona fide  (albeit c...

The YouTube channel SmarterEveryDay just uploaded a video where the channel owner talks about wanting to create a product that's manufactured 100% in the United States, and the enormous problems that he has faced in attempting to do so, the main reason being that almost nothing is manufactured anymore in the country. If you ask any random person why they think that, for example, Apple cellphones are manufactured in China rather than the United States, everybody will answer that it's because it's cheaper there and Apple wants to make them for as cheap as possible. The actual answer is actually a bit scarier than that (as is shown in the video): In actuality the fundamental reason why iPhones are manufactured in China is because it's  not possible  to manufacture them in the United States! The country just  doesn't have the capability . There are no businesses in the United States, no companies, no factories, that would have the technology, the workers and the know-h...