What grinds my gears

While quite rare, there are several examples of older women who are now daring to write about their life experiences as 2nd and 3rd wave feminists, and how they regret almost all of it because it gave them nothing more than making them miserable, lonely and resentful, and now they are now too old and lonely, the best of life having passed them. Turns out that the "liberation of women" is not so "liberating" after all. Pretty much all of them list the same key issues with 2nd-wave (and later) feminism and the so-called "liberation" of women. One of the most fundamental key problems with the entire ideology is that it makes women think that men are competition. Men are "rivals", they are the "enemy", they are the people who compete against you and who are trying to oppress you, screw you over, take advantage of you, subjugate and suppress you, deny you opportunities and take them away from you. Women raised in this kind of ideology and me...

A curious trend has been becoming more and more prevalent during the last year or two in the Open Source communities. And that's the weaponization of far-leftism in order to try to suppress competing projects. In other words: For examples if some big Open Source project wants to upgrade or replace some older project with a more modern and "better" new version, or if such a project is essentially in a competition with another similar project on who gains more popularity, they are starting to weaponize far-leftism to try to smear, discredit and make a pariah of the other project. And they do this, of course, by throwing all their favorite pet buzzword insults at the other project, like "racist", "fascist", "nazi" and so on. I already wrote before about how the people developing the Wayland project have gone to incredible lengths to try to kill the previous big software platform that Wayland is trying to replace (ie. X.org) by completely stoppin...

I have written about this before, but I think it deserves rehashing.  The American far left came up a decade or so ago with the idea that the United States government needs to pay "reparations" to all black people in the country. "Reparations" for what? For something that happened to other people two hundred years ago. And they aren't demanding like a couple thousand bucks per person. They are demanding  millions  of dollars per person. I think the most insane demand that some activist seriously presented in California's congress was 200 million dollars per person. There are many, many reasons why this cannot work and would only destroy the economy of the country. For starters, any economist, or pretty much anybody with even a modicum of an education, will give you the simple answer to why poverty cannot be fixed by simply printing more money (as children and low-IQ uneducated adults sometimes suggest): Just printing more money and dumping it onto the popula...

A "cent" is the smallest monetary unit in the United States, a hundredth of a dollar. The number of physical cent coins currently in circulation is estimated to be between about 100 and 400 billion coins. For several decades it has been a hotly debated topic among economists, academics and politicians that printing cent coins is a horrendous money sink. There are two major reasons for this: Firstly, the best known reason is that minting cent coins is more expensive than their face value. The current estimate is that it costs 3.7 cents to mint one cent coin. Thus, the government is constantly losing money when it mints cent coins. This money comes from the taxpayers, so ultimately it's the citizens who are losing all this money. Secondly, cent coins tend to not circulate and the overwhelming majority of them just get lost. This is because shops give out almost all existing cent coins as exchange for purchases, but people conversely do not use these cents to buy stuff, inst...

Recently I started watching the 2014 TV series The Flash. It's not exactly a mind-blowing work of art, but it's passable, mostly innocent fun. However, from the very first episode you immediately start seeing the modern "inclusive" touch on everything. While they didn't dare to change Barry Allen himself from the comics, almost everything else is. Kid Flash? Black, of course. (Wasn't originally in the comics.) Barry's adoptive father? Black, of course. Barry's girlfriend and fiancé? Black of course. And his stepsister to boot. I mean, come on... I suppose  biologically  speaking there's in principle nothing wrong in marrying your stepsister, but sheesh. There's the undeniable psychological and social aspect to it. At least they didn't have to change one of the other protagonists, Cisco Ramon, ie. Vibe, who was actually originally Hispanic even in the comics. But I feel that in this case fidelity to the source material was principally not ch...

There's yet another somewhat viral math home problem making the rounds, where the student gave the most obvious and logical answer, only for the "correct" answer to be something completely incomprehensible that no sane human being can understand. The problem goes like: "For every column of objects in an array there are 3 rows. The total number of objects in the array is 12. How many rows and columns does the array have?" Ok, easy enough, an array with 12 objects in total, and 3 rows, so quite clearly it's a 3x4 array. In fact, the first part of the answer is given right in the question. So the answer should be "3 rows and 4 columns." Nope, apparently the correct answer is "6 rows and 2 columns." What? "Columns" and "rows" quite unambiguously refer to a two-dimensional array. I literally can't twist my head to figure out how you get 6 rows from 3 rows. The YouTube channel Wrath of Math, which very often makes videos...

For some reason flat-earthers have become enamored with the so-called Gleason's world map, which is an azimuthal equidistant projection of the surface of the Earth, centered on the North pole, and looks like this: (By the way, there's no mathematical reason why the projection needs to be centered at the North pole. It can literally be centered anywhere on the surface of the sphere, and in fact the Wikipedia page linked above also shows a version centered at the South pole. It's just that centering it at the North pole gives the most useful projection because it just so happens that the vast majority of Earth's land mass is located in the northern hemisphere at this point in its geological history. For this reason the version centered at the South pole shows extreme distortion, as most of the land mass is on the outer rim from that perspective.) Most flat-earthers claim that this is  the  correct map of the world, representing what it actually physically is like. Howeve...

While not enormously popular, and at this point in time still pretty fringe, there's nevertheless a small section of the modern far left that, for some reason, wants to depict ancient Rome as, essentially, this multicultural paradise, a melting pot of different cultures and races, where diversity was embraced and welcomed, with people of all kinds of ethnicities, races and nationalities were accepted and even got to high positions of power. A perfect example of "diversity is strength".  However, we know from history that in reality ancient Rome was not like that at all. In reality ancient Rome did not only embrace expansionism and colonialism, but did so in the most brutal of ways. Ancient Rome did not embrace diversity: They conquered and subjugated peoples by brutal force. Rome was not "diverse" because they embraced and welcomed people of all creeds and colors: They conquered nations, subjugated them, took them as slaves, and demanded tribute and absolute obe...

A somewhat common narrative among the American left is that entering the country is a "misdemeanor" and that "a misdemeanor is not a crime", and thus they have committed nothing illegal. I'm not exactly sure why there appears to be this quite common misconception that "misdemeanor" means some kind of small infraction that's not considered a crime. Maybe it's because it resembles the word "misbehavior"? After all "demeanor" is pretty much a synonym for "behavior". Of course in reality in American law a "misdemeanor" is a crime. It's a type of crime. The statement "a misdemeanor is not a crime" is just outright false. But what do you expect from American leftists? Honesty? 

Recently a massive "pro-Palestine" riot happened in the city of Bern, Switzerland, with over five thousand rioters engaging in violence, assault, destruction of property and arson. They attacked police officers, injuring 18 of them. What's worse, they deliberately set fire to a local restaurant, with ten employees inside, who were unable to escape the building. It was almost miraculous that they were saved by the fact that, unlike American law enforcement, the Swiss police forces use water cannons to deal with riots, and in this case the water cannon was used to put out the fire which was getting completely out of hand, saving the people inside the restaurant. Without this it's  extremely  likely that those people would have died. Officials reported that it was probably a question of mere minutes before the fire would have gone completely out of control and become unstoppable. The Swiss police forces mostly stopped the rioters from advancing and eg.occupying and blo...

More people are  legally  and deliberately murdered worldwide in one single year than the total amount of people murdered by the Nazi regime during its entire existence. In just two years more people are legally and deliberately murdered worldwide than the Soviet Union killed people in total during its entire existence. There is no genocide, no holocaust, in the entire history of humanity that surpasses the amount of people deliberately and legally killed worldwide in just a couple of years. And just like with those atrocities, the people being killed are completely innocent of any wrongdoing. They haven't committed any crimes (in fact, they are literally incapable of committing any crimes), they have done absolutely nothing wrong, and the reason why they are killed has nothing to do with with they may nor may not have done. Just like with those other atrocities, they are being murdered just because some people don't like them and don't want them around. Dehumanization of t...

The so-called " motte-and-bailey fallacy " is, essentially, an argumentative tactic that tries to defend an objectionable position by presenting an extremely simplistic more agreeable version of it whenever it's being criticized. In a way, it's a sort of "reverse straw-man" argument: In other words, it's like a normal "straw-man argument" except that instead of the argument being simplified in order to attack, discredit or mock it, it's simplified in the opposite direction in order to try to make it sound more acceptable and agreeable. One of the most perfect examples of this is feminism. Well, at least it was until about 5 or so years ago, give or take, as pure straight feminism has fallen out of fashion from the far left, as the "trans" ideology superseded it and, especially, when famous big-name radical feminists came out to oppose the invasion of women's spaces by "trans" people. In this example I'm talking a...

For some reason the developers of the Ubuntu Linux distribution have decided to replace all the GNU core utilities, which are written in C, with replacements written in Rust. The problem? For an unfathomable reason they are rushing the publication of these new replacements even before they are ready. Indeed, the GNU core utils have a big bunch of automated tests that are run on them every time before a new version release. The Rust replacements developed by the Ubuntu developers fail hundreds of these tests. Some of the replacements fail  all  the tests for that particular utility. On top of that, many of the replacements written in Rust are significantly slower than the originals that are written in C. Some of the utilities run a whopping 17 times slower than the original C counterpart. Not 17% slower; 17 times  slower! Other utilities (such as sort ) can't handle files even nearly as large as the original C version, failing with files that the C version has no problems ...

A McDonald's restaurant calls the police because one client of theirs has been in the bathroom for over an hour. (The story doesn't tell what the actual concern of the restaurant workers was, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that they were concerned about the guy's health, in other words, they were worried that he might have suffered some kind of medical episode and was in need of help, and thus they called 911.) The cops arrive and order the guy to exit the bathroom and the restaurant. He does so. Now, because American cops have an insatiable ID fetish, they absolutely demand the guy to ID himself even though he had not committed any crime, nor did they suspect him of any crime. They just wanted to ID him. It was clear that something unusual was going on because the man is confused, has difficulties understanding what he's being told, doesn't seem to remember even basic things, and is visibly in a confused and dazzled state. At points he doesn't even ...

Recently I made once again the mistake of trying to talk to a far-leftist in an online conversation. Unsurprisingly, I only got absolutely vile toxic rhetoric thrown at me, the same vile defamatory talking points the far left has been regurgitating for over a decade now. Such conversations are completely fruitless. You simply cannot have an actual conversation with brainwashed psychopathic drones. Nothing you can say will ever, ever make them even thinking of reconsidering some things that they have been indoctrinated into believing. Anyway, I suddenly realized something. It's pretty obvious, of course, but actually it's not  really  all that obvious when you think about it. And it's related precisely to that "regurgitating the same talking points". Indeed, the exact same namecalling, defamatory accusations, conspiracy theories and spurious claims that they have been spouting for a decade. Something that pretty much all of them repeat blindly, just parroting what ...

Recently a huge controversy happened in the most recent TwitchCon (something that has greatly hurt the already low reputation of that company), where some random guy just casually and blatantly, in front of hundreds of people, entered the area of one of the female Twitch streamers and just went and grabbed her and tried to kiss her without any permission, until a few seconds later one of the streamer's own bodyguards quickly stepped in and aggressively shoved the guy away. (From the video it appears that said bodyguard was distracted with something else and didn't see the guy enter that reserved area, and it took him a few seconds to notice what the guy was doing, and quickly stepped in to protect his employer.) If that wasn't obnoxious enough, the guy then just quickly walked away and exited the building, in full view of hundreds of people, including "security" staff, who did nothing to try to stop him. And if  that  wasn't obnoxious enough, the streamer late...

I have written several blog posts about how Japan is about to commit the biggest mistake of its entire existence by opening up its borders for mass immigration (from the poorest countries in the world, obviously, because that's  always  how it goes for some reason). If Japan ever gets flooded with massive amounts of immigrants from poor countries, its safety, culture, cleanliness and status as the highest-trust society in the world will very quickly be destroyed. This worry was prompted by the fact that Japan had already started this process a year or two ago, and has already experienced the first symptoms, such as vandalized and burglarized vending machines (which is normally extraordinarily rare), disturbance of the peace at public places and in public transport (which is even rarer), and several other initial signs. This process had been primarily driven by Japan's then-Prime Minister who had apparently contracted the far-leftism cancer and mind virus. Well, what do you kn...

I have written before about the incredible length that some people will go in order to get scammed , sometimes even unwittingly becoming "partners in crime" with the scammers in order to rob... themselves! They will sometimes go to incredible lengths to hide their own activity, in a very similar way as a criminal would do, except that these victims are not robbing someone else's money, they are "robbing" their own money, and sending it to the scammers, avoiding every possible safety measure and hurdle along the way. Recently I saw a CNN investigative piece about these scams, and the opening was incredible: It showed a police officer having to physically stop an older scam victim from inserting more banknotes into a bitcoin machine, with the victim trying to forcefully, almost desperately, insert even more banknotes. The cop had to literally block the slit on the machine with his hand to stop the woman from doing so because she wouldn't listen. And when the c...

The current Pope, Leo XIV, recently made a statement that the Catholic Church must strongly oppose the deportation of illegal migrants by the Trump administration. Oh, is that so, Pope Leo XIV? Well, why don't you put your money where your mouth is, and import all those illegal migrants into the Vatican? Or even some of them? By all means, mister Pope Leo XIV, please tell us what happens to a person who illegally enters the Vatican and tries to stay there without permission. I'm anxiously waiting for your statement on that. Or is that too inconvenient of a topic to discuss?  It's so easy to be pro-immigration, particularly defending illegal migrants, when you don't have to see them in your own back yard. It's so easy when it's not you who has to carry the burden and see your own city being taken over by them. When it would come time to practice what you preach, suddenly all we get is excuses. Fucking hypocrite. 

For the longest time it used to just be "homosexuals" and then "gays" (for some reason "homosexual" fell out of use and is kind of considered an insult, and not used anymore, even though it is the most "official" term). The term "lesbian" was used if one wanted to be a bit more specific, but they too fell under that same umbrella. Then the "woke" social justice warriors started gaining a lot of power in society and with it came all kinds of wordplay. I still remember that for a relatively short period of time the first Holy Acronym was just "LGB", but the "T" was quite soon attached to it. It remained that four-letter acronym for quite some time, and in fact many people still use it to this day. However, over the years more and more letters started being attached to it, to the point that there basically is no one single "standard" Holy Acronym. The longest versions of the Acronym are outright  rid...

The Soviet Union was one of the darkest episodes in human history. It lasted for 70 years and was one of the most oppressive, authoritarian, totalitarian and  murderous  ideologies that have ever existed (the number of murders committed by the Soviet regime in peace time is estimated to be somewhere between 50 and 100 million people, mostly political prisoners, a number that absolutely dwarfs the Nazi Holocaust. Perhaps the only difference between the two is that the Soviets committed those murders in the span of 70 years, while the Nazis committed their murders in less than 5, which made the latter much more and horrendously "industrialized".) Yet, even people who fully know, understand and acknowledge this fact, and genuinely consider the Soviet Union to be one of the most horrendous things that ever happened to humanity, never ever to be repeated again, usually don't have much problem in at least having a rational and reasonable discussion and relatively neutral attitu...

Have you ever wondered why there's no antifa presence in the Nordic countries, especially in Finland and Norway? Especially Norway is quite notorious for pretty much zero antifa presence and activism. Why is that? Is antifa classified as an illegal terrorist organization there? Nope. Are people's fundamental constitutional rights being infringed upon there in order to stop them? Nope. Is some kind of suppression campaign being done behind the scenes by the government? Nope. The reason is pretty simple and straightforward: The Norwegian police enforces the law. That's it. It's that simple. The only and sole thing you need to do in order to get rid of antifa is to just enforce the law. That's it. You don't need anything else. Just apply the same law enforcement to them as to everybody else. Antifa can't survive if they aren't allowed to break the law. Whatever cops would do to an individual person, do to them in the same way. If they disrupt traffic, arres...

And now for something completely different. Yngwie Malmsteen is one of those "guitar gods" (at least in his own view), one of those very experienced and skillful "shredders" who play 20 notes per second on the electric guitar and play in extravagant tours for thousands of avid fans, and has been doing since the early 1980's, making him one of them with the longest career. Yet, many people outside his most rabid fandom just hate the guy. People who love and admire other great guitarists like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and many others. There's something about Yngwie that just rubs them in the wrong way, something that makes him different and dislikeable. And it's not just a few people hating him, but it's really common, and it's unlikely to be just a trend, a fad, some kind of unearned bad reputation that these people are just believing without reason and evidence, or as a meme (like what has happened with Nickelback.) Part of the criticism stems from...

I have written many times in this blog how the modern far left doesn't really have a set of values that they believe in. Instead, they will take whatever position is currently the prevailing narrative among them, and which gives them power and control over society. They will literally strongly support one position today and the exact opposite tomorrow, if that's what's trending among their ranks, and if it gives them power. They will also hold two completely opposite views at the same time (ie. doublethink), freely swapping between them at a moment's notice to whichever is more convenient for the current situation. They could literally flip-flop between two contrary position several times per minute, depending on the situation. There are countless examples of this that could be listed, but perhaps the most egregious and abhorrent one is their antisemitism. For the longest time the far-left heavily opposed antisemitism, for rather obvious reasons. However, like always, t...

I have written previously about the extremely strange phenomenon that happens in many parts of the United States, and that's how government officials and law enforcement officers refuse to do anything to illegal squatters , in other words, people who have invaded an unoccupied house and are living there illegally, without paying rent or anything. In the vast, vast majority of other countries (particularly the free democratic ones), such people would be removed and arrested by police probably within the hour. Not in many parts of the United States, though. Because of some extremely strange contrived set of laws, it appears that city officials and the police forces can't legally do anything to squatters without a court order, and even more strangely, getting that court order seems  extremely  difficult. There are documented cases of home owners trying  for years  to get rid of illegal squatters in their premises, without success. The police will do nothing about them, ...

Remember about four years ago when the American left, including all the leftist politicians, were up in arms about "insurrection", how absolutely horrendous of a crime it is, how the so-called "insurrection" was literally the worst event that has ever happened in the entire history of the United States (I'm not even making that up), and how every single person even remotely involved must absolutely be prosecuted in the harshest of terms (so much so that corrupt judges sentenced innocent people into astonishingly long sentences for no crimes whatsoever)? The horrors of "insurrection" was the constant talking point for several years. They kept pounding on it again, and again, and again, pretty much non-stop, trying to make it true via sheer repetition. Multiple kangaroo court congressional hearings were held about it, as the Democrats were trying to push really, really hard into making it an actual "insurrection" and trying to somehow throw Tru...

For quite a long time, pretty much as long as what can be called "primary school" has existed, pretty much everywhere in the world, students were not just taught to read, write and things like mathematics, history, geography and other theoretical stuff, but a quite big portion of the curriculum was dedicated to teaching them practical skills: How to cook, how to do woodwork, how to repair stuff at home, how to sew a button or a torn cloth, and so on and so forth. This was very common in the vast majority of schools up to some time in the 1970's or 1980's, give or take, depending on the country. In fact, it's  still  the case in some countries, although perhaps to lesser extents than it was in the past. Then something happened in many countries. There formed this strange mentality that teaching such practical everyday skills does not belong to school. That primary schools are nothing but preparation for high school and university, and you don't need to know how...