What grinds my gears

One of the main problems with the European Union is that it is, essentially, a "bait-and-switch" entity: It was originally sold as a purely economic union, and a lot of countries voted to join this economic union, only for it to grant itself extremely authoritarian legislative powers over its member countries, effectively becoming a federal government rather than being just a paneuropean economic agreement. This is not exaggeration. For example in Finland, when joining the EU was being promoted to the citizens, the politicians, journalists and other people influencing the decision were very explicitly and directly claiming that it was merely just an economic union with extremely little or even no legislative power, and that the full sovereignty of the country was in no way in jeopardy, and that the EU would have no say in the local laws of the country. And Finland is by far not the only example of this. In several countries the EU membership was up to citizen vote, and the ci...

There's a quite big irony with regards to the United States: It's one of the very few countries in this world where you can actually refuse to ID to the police unless they suspect you of a crime (that they can articulate). This is a direct consequence of the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The irony comes from the fact that, at the same time, the United States is one of the very few free democratic countries in this world where the police is constantly demanding your ID for the most minor of interactions, even when they don't have the legal right to make such a demand. (Indeed, in most other free countries, especially in Europe, the police very rarely demands your ID when they interact with you, even when the country in question is a full-on "stop-and-ID state", ie. the law gives police the right to demand your ID for whatever reason they want, in any situation they want, no reason need given. They would have the legal right to demand it, yet they...

There are many tests out there that can be used to find out where (according to that particular test) you land on the so-called "political compass" (which is usually a two-dimensional graph where the horizontal axis depicts left-vs-right mostly in terms of economy, and the vertical axis depicts libertarianism-vs-authoritarianism in terms of sociopolitics.) Generally, when you do one of these tests, it will show you the "political compass" and a dot depicting where you are aligned. The problem with this? That single dot does in no way depict how "spread out" your opinions are on different topics. Some people might very narrowly fit one single small area of the "compass", while others may be all over the place. In other words, if you were to draw a dot for each individual opinion, rather than just showing the average of them, some people would have a rather small grouping of dots somewhere, while for others the dots would be all over the place. And...

During the latter half of the last century Zimbabwe was one of the most agriculturally rich countries in Africa. The agricultural produce of the country was so abundant that the country even engaged in rendering food aid to neighboring countries. The "problem" with this? The vast majority of those agricultural farms were owned and run by white people of mostly European descent. In the early 2000's the then dictator of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, decided to correct this "problem" and forcefully expropriated all of those farm lands, kicked out all of the white farmers, and gave the lands to the native people. Unsurprisingly the agricultural production of the country plummeted very fast. It didn't take even ten years before the country was facing an enormous famine. It was so bad that very soon Zimbabwe was in need of aid from its neighboring countries rather than the other way around. It became so bad that Mugabe reversed his policies... almost. He begged for the...

As if the Academy Awards ceremonies had not already been cringey enough for many years now, the latest one had several winners give completely embarrassing speeches supporting "sex workers" and the "sex worker community", and how they want to decriminalize prostitution. Ok, they can have and express their opinions. That's their prerogative and their fundamental right to free speech. If they want to embarrass themselves in front of millions of viewers, I'm not the one wanting to stop them. However, would it be too much to ask for some consistency rather than having double standards? These are the exact same people who got the so-called "grid girls" banned from Formula 1. These are the exact same people who have been somewhat successfully campaigning against having sexy female characters in video games. These are the exact same people throwing temper tantrums when Asian video games depicting sexy female characters become immensely popular. Because of...

Because they are told to protest, and they blindly obey. That's the only reason. The vast, vast majority of the protestors have absolutely no idea what's going on. I am absolutely certain that if you went to ask these leftist protestors even the most basic questions about the conflict, they wouldn't know any answers. Ask them why Russia attacked, what reasons or excuses they used to attack, and they might throw some blind guesses but they wouldn't know the actual answers. Ask them about anything related to the war, any details, no matter how basic and broad, and they wouldn't know any answers. Ask them at all what Trump is doing and how he's approaching the peace negotiations, and they wouldn't know any answers. They have absolutely no idea whatsoever what's going on, or about any details of the war, no matter how basic and broad. Nothing. They are not interested in doing any research whatsoever. Even if you asked them to do some research on the subjec...

A man is driving along a road when he suffers a major seizure, causing the car to veer off and drive off the road to a ditch, thankfully at such low speed that the man is uninjured. However, he is unconscious and unable to move. Witnesses quickly call the emergency number and tell them about the man's seizure and accident. The cops are informed by dispatch that the man had suffered a seizure, so they knew this when going to the site of the accident. Medical personnel was also alerted. At the site of the accident a firefighter (rather than a paramedic, for some reason) tries to assess the condition of man and asks him questions. The man is clearly confused, doesn't really know what's happening or where he even is, his responses are incoherent, and he is constantly going in and out of consciousness. In other words, his medical episode is still fully ongoing, and he is in need of medical help. The firefighter (again, rather than a paramedic, for some reason) tells the man that...

Flat-earthers love to present hundreds and hundreds of silly arguments. Some of them might make a tiny bit of sense, others are completely nonsensical and incomprehensible. On the more incomprehensible and ridiculous side is this one: "If the Earth was a globe, then airplanes would need to be constantly pitching down when they fly, in order to follow the curvature of the Earth." And that's it. That's the entire argument. They don't explain any further. They don't explain what exactly is the problem that they are seeing in that. Yes, they seriously present that argument as I presented it above, without any further arguments or points, apparently because it, all on its own, shows something impossible and ridiculous, or something that everybody knows that just doesn't happen. They present it as if it were somehow completely self-evident what the "problem" is, without having to explain it any further. My answer that argument is: "Yes, so what?...

Suppose that you visit some exotic foreign country, like China or Japan, and during your visit there's a big local religious festivity going on, and one custom of it is that people will say some traditional well-wishing saying to other people, including you. Now suppose you were to become extremely offended by this, and proudly proclaim eg. on some stupid TikTok or YouTube video how offensive you feel it is, because that's not your religion, and it goes against your religion, and you start making demands for them to stop saying those things, to change their customs and culture to suit your personal sensibilities. I think we can all agree that you would be being a complete dumbass. I think this would be one thing where left, right and center would all agree: Don't be such an entitled prick. When you are in such a country as a visitor, you should respect and appreciate the local culture. Complaining about the local religious culture and how it offends you is being an egotisti...

If there's one thing that humans are incredibly creative at, it's coming up with ways to scam other people. One of the newest (or at least somewhat new) forms of scamming is selling used or even completely non-functional GPUs as "new" on Ebay and other online marketplaces. People and even companies selling completely unsealed products as new on such websites is nothing unusual, as they have been doing that for literally decades. For many companies it's just effectively another distribution platform, and in fact one that cuts many middle-men and thus can be cheaper. Thus finding completely new unused products on Ebay and similar websites is nothing strange. What some scammers are doing, however, is purchasing used products, such as GPUs, for very cheap and then selling them as "new", for a much higher price (close to the retail price of that product). They might disguise themselves as genuine sellers, or they might just say "purchased by mistake, bra...

Doctor Mike is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, medical doctor celebrities on YouTube, with over 13 million subscribers, most of his videos getting over a million views. He is an actual licensed general practitioner in the United States. In at least one video (and possibly others) he has very clearly and explicitly instructed his viewers "do not let your dog lick your face". The reason for this is that dogs (and other animals) often have bacteria (most prominently capnocytophaga bacteria) in their mouths that can cause very severe (and sometimes even fatal) infection in humans. This is one main reason why dog bites should always be taken very seriously and immediately treated by medical professionals. However, the bacteria can be transmitted by licks as well: It's enough for a dog to lick your hand, and then you picking your nose with that same hand, for it to be possible to get an infection, which could be extremely severe in the worst cases. Thus, Doctor Mike...

The open source projects GNOME, Librerwolf and hundreds and hundreds of others have become notorious for being very openly run by far-leftist extremists who have take an absolutely totalitarian political stance: Not only do they openly declare their extremist political views but, more importantly, they absolutely and categorically forbid any dissenting opinions and discussion, and quickly ban anybody who even dares to question their policies. In other words, these "free" software projects espouse the exact opposite of freedom: They are their own totalitarian oppressive dictatorial mini-regimes within their own domains, expelling and banning anybody who presents even the slightest of political dissent and criticism, which is so typical of modern far-leftism. My message to all these projects is this: You do not understand what you are doing. All of the project members embracing this ideology and these draconian oppressive measures: You think you are safe because you are toeing...

Some days ago I saw the most cringe and embarrassing newspaper front page I have ever seen in Finland: It was nothing but a black page with white text on it. It was a message directly to Donald Trump, with a list of bullet points about why he was wrong about Russia and its involvement in the Ukrainian war, and how Russia is fully to blame, and all the wrongs that Russia has done to Ukraine. I'm not exaggerating or making it up: It read exactly like someone's random social media post, ranting about Trump and something he has said. This on the front page of a major mainstream newspaper. It's the most embarrassing thing I have ever seen. Finnish journalists, here's a wild idea: How about we end the war peacefully first, and then you can play the blame game afterwards? Priorities. Just end the war as peacefully as possible, stop people getting killed, no matter what it takes. Once that has been achieved, then you can start throwing your tantrums about who the bad guys ar...

I have written about this several times in this blog, but I think it deserves repeating because the claims are so utterly pervasive. The claim that "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences" is utterly false . Freedom of speech means PRECISELY freedom from consequences. That's its VERY DEFINITION. By saying that it "does not mean freedom from consequences" you are trying to define it as the exact opposite of what it is. It's like saying "a free meal does not mean you don't have to pay money for it". No, a "free meal" means precisely that you don't need to pay money for it. Likewise "freedom of speech" means precisely that there are no negative consequences for exercising it. That's the very definition of the concept. If there are negative consequences from your expression of opinion, then it's not free speech anymore. It's punishable speech. It's restricted speech. (And no, "negati...