What grinds my gears

A year ago the YouTube channel MegaLag uploaded an exposé of the popular browser extension "Honey", which was acquired at some point by the giant megacorporation PayPal. Some people had already raised concerns about the extension years prior, and some big-name YouTube channels even stopped accepting their sponsorship deals because of their dubious practices. But that exposé video went really viral, has (as of writing this) 18 million views, and caused a huge controversy and even lawsuits against PayPal. Turns out that what was exposed in that original video wasn't even the worst part. In fact, those things are peanuts compared to what the extension is actually doing and how it works, as revealed by the second part of the exposé, which MegaLag uploaded recently. There are something like dozen individual things that the extension and the company running it are doing that's either outright illegal, or at a very minimum extremely questionable. Most of those things are qu...

I perfectly understand why YouTube has for many years implemented and used automatic moderation of comments. Given that probably literally millions of comments are written by people every single minute, it's literally impossible to have every single one of them checked by a human. Also, relying solely on people reporting infringing or inappropriate comments is very slow and unreliable. Thus it's understandable that an automated system is used, particularly nowadays that AI has become so incredibly smart. However, over the last couple of years this automated comment moderation system has been increasingly broken. Particularly during 2025, especially in the summer/fall months, it was completely broken, with something like 30-40% of main comments being completely wrongly auto-removed, and to my estimation a whopping 80-90% of replies to other people's comments being auto-removed , completely at random, completely regardless of what the comments were saying. There was also some...

Some sociopolitical commentators and other opinionated people on the more conservative side of the political compass argue that "gender equality" will never be achieved, but most of them are referring to biological reasons, ie. the fact that humans are a sexually dimorphic species and thus men and women physically cannot be completely equal in everything ever, and there will never be absolute equality. However, that's not the point I'm making here. I mean something quite different with that sentiment. More specifically: "Gender equality" will never be achieved because for the far-leftist activists who want it, it's an eternally moving goal that always moves away no matter what society does in order to reach it. In fact, most far-leftists couldn't even define what they mean by "gender equality" any more than they can define what "man" or "woman" means. Ask three far-leftist activists what "gender equality" means...

In recent years there has been a minor trend where a somewhat popular tiktoker will travel to a foreign country and deliberately commit minor crimes there on stream for internet clout and views. (They are usually tiktokers because neither Twitch nor YouTube allow this kind of thing, and such videos would be quickly removed and the user restricted or banned. I believe there are a couple of other video sharing platforms that are more permissive, but tiktok is by far the largest one.) Every example I'm aware of has been an American doing this, and most often it will be an east-Asian country that they travel to, sometimes some other one (such as Israel). Several of these cases have got notoriety because the streamers in question are currently facing years in prison in those countries (and in fact, at worst tens of years if given maximum sentences for each individual crime.) One has to question: What exactly are they thinking? Are they insane? Why risk going to jail for years, perhaps e...

Many leftist activist YouTubers are repeating the leftist doctrine that super-rich millionaires are evil, corrupt, greedy and exploitative, and that they should be taxed to oblivion until there are no millionaires. Some of the biggest such YouTubers are actually millionaires themselves (yes, it is actually possible to become a millionaire by simply making YouTube videos , as incredible as that might sound.) This kind of rhetoric is not exclusive to YouTube millionaires either, as some other such rich people who have been brainwashed by the leftist cult are repeating the same mantras. It's hard to guess whether these people are just spouting these talking points to virtue-signal and preach the far-leftist catechism, or whether they have an actual cognitive dissonance. Bad cognitive dissonance is quite common in the American far left, such as when they are demanding to "abolish the police" but will genuinely call 911 when they feel being in danger with zero self-awareness,...

The use of marihuana for medical purposes has since many years ago been legalized in many states of the United States. And not just in the form of pills that have cannabis extract (like in many other countries), but just outright "weed" that you smoke. And, subsequently, a lot of marihuana dispenseries have appeared in those states (so many, in fact, that you can literally see two or even three of them from one single spot on certain streets). These dispenseries have officially the same status as pharmacies, ie. they need the same licenses and they need to follow the same laws (such as HIPAA and others). A lot of people have filmed the entrances of these dispenseries, and the amount of daily visitors is quite large. It's an almost constant stream of "medical patients". In fact, many have noted that these dispenseries seem to have more visitors than actual regular pharmacies. Huge quotation marks around that "medical patients". Indeed, it's one of t...

Yeah, I know, the entire idea of the Earth being flat is the most delusional claim of them all, but putting that aside for a moment, and looking at some individual claims and "evidence" that they try to provide, this is one of the most delusional and ridiculous. Granted, as far as I know, perhaps not all flat-earthers make this claim, but some of them definitely do. (I have, however, never seen a video of a flat-earther deny this claim or say that it's not valid or that it's mistaken and that they don't personally believe it's legit. Maybe some do, but I have not seen it. I would guess that most of them just say nothing because they don't want to contradict each other in their beliefs.) And what is it? It's when they use some camera with a moderate zoom lens, and they zoom into a star or planet, don't focus on it properly, and it ends up looking like a fuzzy blur that, due to atmospheric distortions, is constantly changing, and then claiming that  ...

The amount of AI-generated videos has absolutely exploded on YouTube (and other video sharing platforms). For some reason (and perhaps unfortunately), YouTube itself is not only A-ok with this, but they are actually  encouraging  and  supporting  and  promoting  it, essentially declaring it the best thing since sliced bread and how it allows people to express themselves better and yada yada. In reality, at least 99% of AI-generated videos on YouTube are absolute meaningless trash, ie. so-called "AI-slop". It's essentially just people writing some prompt into one of those AI video generator websites and uploading the result, the video often looking uncanny and jarring, and its contents being complete meaningless, pointless, random "brainrot" material. Or, when it's not completely random or pointless, it's misinformation, completely made-up stuff (of the clickbait kind), or outright scams. One defining feature of "AI-slop" is that it's extrem...

Back in  slightly  more innocent times, in the 90's and very early 2000's, there was a semi-humorous neologism coined by some people (more on the moderately left side of the political compass): "Gaydar." They used the neologism to refer to that instinct that one gets that a person might be homosexual even if he or she doesn't outwardly indicate it very obviously. Many people who interact with or watch a lot of people who are homosexual might form this kind of instinct, which might catch on very minor subtle cues and hints on how the person looks, speaks and behaves, the manner of speaking, the tone of voice, the words and expressions, the small mannerisms and gestures, the outwards appearance of the person. It's like they have a biological "radar" that just detects hidden "gayness" in people, even when they don't obviously show it outwardly. Well, I have coined my own similar term more recently, and that would be "SJW-radar", ...

Recently, a man named Thomas Perez Jr reported his father missing. For some unknown reason the cops just decided that a) the father had been murdered (even though they had literally zero evidence), and that b) Thomas Perez Jr himself was the killer. So they proceeded to interrogate him for a whopping 17 hours straight, and apply more and more psychological pressure and manipulation as the hours passed by. They lied through their teeth again and again, over and over, that they had absolute proof that he had killed his father. They even called a friend of his and convinced him to tell Thomas to confess. After 17 hours of non-stop interrogation, with extreme psychological pressure and manipulation, Mr Perez suffered from what most people suffer in such a situation, ie. confusion caused by mental and physical exhaustion, and he got completely gaslighted and started doubting his own memory. This is a very well known psychological phenomenon, and it worked like a marvel here. When you are me...

As written earlier, I think that both Wikipedia and the Linux Foundation are committing fraud because both get hundreds of millions of dollars of donations every year, yet only use about 2-3% of that money to actually run, maintain and develop the projects in question, with the rest of the money going to other things, oftentimes things that have absolutely nothing to do with those tasks. For example, the Linux Foundation  proudly  proclaims in its annual financial report that 60% of the donations it receives goes to "diverse community members" (while, at the same time, less than 3% of the donations goes to actual Linux kernel development.) Why do I think this is fraud? Two main reasons: Firstly, neither one is a charity organization nor a social activist organization. One is an educational organization dedicated to collecting, writing and freely disseminating information in the form of an extensive online encyclopedia. The other is an organization created for the developmen...

I wrote earlier that Wikipedia might be one of the biggest frauds in this century because it receives about 200 million dollars in donations every year, yet only uses 3 to 4 million dollars to actually running and maintaining the website. The rest goes to something entirely unrelated. Well, not to be outcompeted, the Linux Foundation released their financial report for this year (which they have to do by law because they are a "non-profit" organization), and it turns out that in 2025 said foundation received 300 million dollars in donations, from which only 2.6% was spent on the development of Linux. Everything else was used for something unrelated to that development. In fact, the report visibly and proudly proclaims how 60% of its funds went to "diverse community members". (And no, that's not "diverse community members who are maintaining and developing the Linux kernel", as the sum that goes to that development is separately listed. That 60% goes t...

I wrote a year ago about the long-time YouTuber who goes by the nickname Thunderf00t. He has been on the platform since almost the very beginning. In the earlier years, from a bit before 2010 to about 2012 or thereabouts he was primarily making videos about various scientific topics and, quite notably, about Christianity, atheism and skepticism. His YouTube beefs with some of the most famous and infamous Christian YouTube apologists of the time were almost legendary. Then the feminist "social justice" ideology took over the world-wide and particularly American atheist community in full force, already showing the same kind of tactics as we know today: In other words, dehumanizing, denigrating, shunning, purging and "cancelling" anybody who didn't align with their social justice ideology. Thunderf00t strongly opposed this takeover, and the social justice cult in general, and for a couple of years he became one of the strongest "anti-SJWs" in the world. ...

In the era of the meteoric raise of American far-leftist activism, from about 2010 to about 2015, give or take, when this activism was still mostly restricted to university campuses and was in its initial stages of taking over the rest of society, one of the most prominent, famous and popular critics of the far left was Milo Yiannopoulos. Back in those days he was immensely popular among the "anti-SJWs" and a good portion of American conservatives. Not only was he really smart, very eloquent, very quick-thinking (eg. being able to respond to any criticism with very good answers on the spot), but on top of that he is very openly and flamboyantly gay, and married to a black guy, which greatly dampened accusations of him being "homophobic" and "racist" (both accusations being very weak because of his very evident status, which he happily flaunted around.) Even though he is British, back in that era he was, indeed, one of the biggest American conservative spea...

Recently the highly acclaimed video game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 made headlines by receiving multiple awards at The Game Awards (which is a video game award ceremony that kind of replaced the older Spike Video Game Awards), which is pretty much considered the "Oscars" ceremony of video games. Even more recently the same game made again headlines by having its "game of the year" title revoked... by the "Indie Game Awards" organization. A good majority of people are very angry at TGA for this travesty and are throwing shit at them. What they don't realize (and what a lot of outlets are failing to clearly communicate) is that the "Indie Game Awards", or IGA, is  not  the same organization as "The Game Awards", or TGA. The IGA is a completely separate, different organization that has nothing to do with TGA. And, in fact, the IGA is completely irrelevant, and a total joke. It's an extremely small organization (so small that they...

One of the core characteristics of the modern far left is that doubt, dissent, skepticism and criticism is not only discouraged, but outright aggressively punished. This extreme enforcement of adherence to the ideology has only escalated during the past 20 or so years, to the point that nowadays you could literally get physically assaulted if you show any dissent or doubt (as physical violence has been actively normalized among the far left during the past 10 years.) This makes the hordes of brainwashed far-leftists very obedient, submissive and easy to manipulate. Whenever some new far-leftist doctrine starts gaining popularity among them (often started by some leftist academic or other influential person among their ranks), it gets immediately adopted and accepted without doubt, without criticism, without skepticism, without any research. Most of them are literally too scared to show any dissent or doubt. (That is, for example, the reason why they get so uneasy when asked to define w...

Some studies of human DNA among different ethnicities and regions of the world have suggested that most of the world's population has a small amount of Neanderthal DNA mixed in with their original human DNA, with the exception of some African ethnicities, who lack this Neanderthal DNA. While I have not corroborated the veracity of these studies, I have little doubt that they are likely correct, or at least on the ballpark. (The reason for this separation is that Neanderthals did not evolve in Africa, and only mixed to a small extent with humans when some groups of those humans emigrated from Africa to other parts of the world, starting with Europe. Most of these groups of people never migrated back to Africa, and thus some African human populations never got that DNA.) Unsurprisingly, black supremacists, who are way too happy and eager to jump to the opportunity to flip the script, essentially "appropriating" the white supremacist script and turn it on its head, have jump...

In the United States legal system, the target of a lawsuit can submit a so-called "motion to dismiss" to the judge presiding the case. If the judge deems the motion valid, then the case will just be dismissed and will not proceed further. Rather obviously, the motion to dismiss has to give a good argument why the lawsuit should be dismissed and, also rather obviously, these arguments need to meet certain criteria (so as to not infringe on the legal rights of the person suing.) In general, a "motion to dismiss" argues that the lawsuit is invalid. There are several reasons why a lawsuit may be legitimately invalid. For example, if the lawsuit fails to actually cite any existing law that has been allegedly broken. If someone sues someone because he thinks that someone looks too ugly, that's a quite clear immediate dismissal because there is no law for that, and thus the lawsuit isn't even citing any law that's allegedly broken. Another reason is, even if th...

For several decades Sweden was the "rape capital" of Europe. In other words, most rapes per capita of all European countries. For several years now, however, the UK has surpassed Sweden also on this front, and by quite a margin at that. The approach to this problem by these governments has been a bit different, though. While the Swedish government (and their lapdogs, ie. the mainstream media) engaged in an extremely strong policy of denial and censorship, the UK government, while also doing that to some extent, has instead opted for deflection, gaslighting and scapegoating. Perhaps the systemic rape problem in the UK is too big to ignore, and thus they aren't outright denying it. Instead, what they are doing is deflecting and gaslighting: Who, according to the UK government, are to be blamed for the rape epidemic and the UK having become the "rape capital" of Europe? British teenage school boys. That's who. I'm not even kidding. But still, that's too...

Plagiarism has been a plague on YouTube for pretty much as long as it has been an immensely popular platform to publish original work. If someone publishes an original video with original material on YouTube, and that video gets immensely popular (eg. millions of views), it's pretty much  guaranteed  that at least 3 or 4 other channels,  at the very minimum , will copy the idea and make a recreation of that video to one extent or another (in the vast majority of cases not crediting the original, of course.) Oftentimes a similar type of popular YouTuber from a different (usually non-English-speaking) country will just blatantly copy the idea of an even bigger YouTuber. You can be pretty certain that, for example, (what effectively amounts to) "the Mr Beast of country X" will copy many if not most of the ideas of the actual Mr Beast videos, the amount of imitation going to really egregious extents. Of course it doesn't always need to be someone from another country spea...

A couple of workers are on their way to do a roofing job in some American suburb, and some neighbor sees them retrieve some tools from the house in question and calls a non-emergency police line telling them that there are a couple of people she doesn't recognize. The police precinct, apparently because they are bored and have nothing better to do, send a whopping 8 police cruisers on the case, lights and sirens at full blast, driving at extreme speeds, dangerously waving through traffic, like they were on their way to a bank robbery or mass shooting or something. This merely because of a report of a couple of younger men being in some neighborhood. When they arrive, one of the cops spots one of those men and starts running towards him at full speed, screaming like an absolute psychopathic lunatic, and not like angry screaming but a joyous "wooo!" yell, like he were a frat boy at pool party jumping into the pool or something. When he catches up with the guy, who is in no ...

Some years ago advocates of the Rust programming language started very strongly pushing the idea of adding support for it in the Linux kernel source code. For reasons unknown, the creator and owner of the kernel project, Linus Torvalds, made a surprise move and actually accepted that idea. (This is very surprising because over the past 30 years Torvalds has summarily rejected, sometimes very aggressively, literally dozens of other programming languages that have been suggested for the kernel, several of which would have been perfectly adequate for it. It's unclear why he suddenly decided to make an exception with this particular one, out of literally dozens.) The Rust advocates have already started replacing perfectly valid and working pieces of C code in the kernel with Rust versions. In most cases there's no reason for the switch, other than changing it for the sake of changing it and nothing else, as in most cases the original C code has been battle-tested for literally deca...

YouTube just now happened to recommend a video that had a title like "this is Trump's America". The comment section is flooded with angry people calling the cops shown in the video "gestapo" and how they are engaging in "racial profiling" and asking how this is different from Nazi Germany, and calling Trump and the cops all their favorite pet names, and recounting how they have allegedly seen masked ICE agents take non-white people off the streets simply and solely because they were non-white, and yada yada yada ad infinitum. So the video must be really bad, doesn't it? Surely it shows something like an army of ICE agents storming some street, rounding up black people, assaulting them and putting them in handcuffs and taking them away, threatening them with weapons, with people screaming and crying... stuff like that? Nope. The video shows a car stopping and three men, who might or might not be federal agents, stepping out, and the guy with the cam...

Since several generations now, most Intel CPUs have shipped with two types of cores: "performance" and "efficiency" cores. The "performance cores" are your normal full-on full-power full-speed cores, as normal. The "efficiency cores", however, are slower but less power-consuming cores. That's not a big secret, Intel is completely open about it, and pretty much every tech-savvy PC user knows that. However, most PC users greatly underestimate how inefficient those "efficiency" cores actually are. The "efficiency cores" allow Intel to proclaim impressive numbers. For example, an Intel Core i9-13900K processor has 24 cores, which support hyperthreading, and thus have 48 threads! 24 cores (48 threads) sounds quite impressive! Problem is, only 8 of those cores are actual performance cores. The remaining 16 are "efficiency" cores. And "efficiency" cores are very, very inefficient. In actual reality you are get...

Flat-earthers oftentimes have a hard time understanding why Earth's atmosphere is "next to a vacuum" and doesn't get "sucked" by the vacuum. I explain the reason here . Oftentimes these same flat-earthers will use vacuum chambers as examples of how vacuum "sucks" air into it: The walls of the vacuum chamber are under enormous pressure, and if it's opened, it "sucks" air in very rapidly. This is a complete misunderstanding of what's happening. The actual reason why vacuum chambers experience an enormous amount of pressure by the surrounding air, and why the air rushes in at enormous speeds if it's opened, is very closely related to what I explained in that other article. To help understand, consider the atmosphere as if it were water. This is, in fact, not far-fetched because both liquids and gases behave in a fluid manner, quite similarly to each other. Their densities may be quite different, and this density behaves a bit dif...

Prank shows have existed for almost as long as television (and, of course, the practice of pranking itself goes back millenia.) Maybe the show is called "candid camera", or "just for laughs", or whatever. Unsurprisingly, a lot of such content has been uploaded to YouTube since almost the beginning of that site, as well as all the other video sharing platforms. A lot of people, quite justly so, heavily criticize and oppose prank videos where the pranks are mean and done in bad spirit. Scaring people, assaulting people (in American legalese "assault" does not necessarily require physical contact, just the physical movements needed to make the person seriously believe that he will get physically hurt, even if physical contact is never made; if physical contact that causes injury does occur, the legal term is "battery"), causing them stress, worry or panic (eg. faking some accident that makes nearby people panic and think that something horrible has ...