What grinds my gears

Because of the recent solar eclipse, flat-earthers all over the internet are once again making tons and tons of social media posts and videos about how the eclipse is not caused by the Moon being in front of the Sun and yada yada yada, making up all kinds of random stuff using completely made-up arguments and blurry photos. Yet, once again, I have not seen a single mention, a single comment, a single reference to, a single explanation attempt, a single excuse, not even a vague hand-wave or dismissal, nothing, not a peep, about the one question that they just have zero answers to. From the thousands and thousands and thousands of posts and videos, I have yet to see a single one that tackles this problem, mentions it in any way, and much less tries to explain it. And that is: How exactly are scientists able to predict solar eclipses literally decades in advance, to the accuracy of seconds, and where the path of totality and partiality will be, to the accuracy of meters? Indeed, scientist...

I recently saw a YouTube video that was a sort of interview of a player who had started playing Star Citizen and had spent a whopping 11 thousand dollars on that game in one year. Not even going into the quality and state of the game, even if it were the best and most polished game in existence, spending 11 thousand dollars on it is just completely insane. I am quite an avid gamer myself, and have been buying video games for over 30 years now. I did a rough estimate of how many games I have ever purchased and how much money I have spent in total on them during these 30 years, and it's in fact somewhere on that same ballpark, actually. Maybe a bit more. Say, very roughly somewhere around 12 thousand dollars in total, ie. about 400 dollars a year. I think about 400 dollars a year in video games is quite moderate. I very, very rarely buy full-priced 60+ dollar games, and almost always wait for a significant discount. During those 30 years I have, perhaps, bought about 20 or so games a...

I have come up with the theory that when it comes to political activism there are, roughly speaking, two types of activists: "Genuine" and "dogmatic".  "Genuine" in this context does not necessarily mean "good", as in doing political activism for a good cause. Many activists are completely genuine but advocating for absolutely detrimental policies. By "genuine" I mean that the activists are fighting for a specific cause, to correct a specific wrong (at least in their view) and, most importantly, if that "wrong" is corrected, they will be content and stop their activism. Problem fixed, it does not exist anymore, thus there's no need to do any more activism, and they can go on with their lives. The vast majority of this kind of activism is for a good cause, some is for a rather irrelevant cause, and sometimes, as mentioned, it might actually be detrimental. But the crucial point is that it's a cause that the activists ge...

I happened to stumble across one of those "1950's ads that didn't age so well" videos on YouTube. Some of the ads in question have indeed not aged well at all. Such as a medical doctor (or, at a minimum, someone claiming to be) exalting the virtues of smoking a particular brand of cigarettes. Or an ad showing medical research results about how a particular brand of cigarette is good for the throat and sinuses. Or an advertisement about a beauty product containing actual radioactive radium (with the ad prominently stating that fact, and claiming that it's not dangerous in such low doses.) The same video, however, also had a couple of ads that showed an archetypal 1950's happy housewife doing something nice for her husband, like for example preparing and serving him coffee (of the particular brand being advertised, of course.) And... that's it. There was nothing more to it in those ads than that. Both had the actress talk about how she wanted to make her hus...

In June I wrote a blog post about how " AI might destroy the Linux kernel ", where I pointed out how the Linux kernel has, during the past months, been absolutely flooded with AI-generated merge requests for patches, fixes, new features and new drivers, with literally thousands and thousands of such AI-generated code being submitted for review every single month. And the pace isn't slowing down. On the contrary, it's only getting worse and worse. I posited that this will be absolutely detrimental to the development and quality of the kernel development because of two possible approaches that the maintainers could take, neither of which is very good: Either 1) they start reviewing every single merge request for validity, which will grind the actual kernel development pretty much to a halt because there are so many of them, or 2) they will become sloppy and start accepting merge requests with only cursory reviewing and supervision, which may introduce bugs, degraded per...

There exist quite some conspiracy theories about statins, about how dangerous they might or might not be, and people having these doubts about their safety and efficacy include some doctors of medicine. However, this blog post is not about that. I don't know if they are safe and beneficial or not. Maybe they are. But this is not about that. Recently I had a routine blood checkup with an employer-provided health benefit physician, and almost all blood levels related to obesity were above recommended levels and good cholesterol was below recommended levels. In a followup phone consultation the doctor  immediately  suggested statins, and gave a spiel about them that almost felt rehearsed. He gave several points and several arguments, literally like a rehearsed speech. I'm not even kidding. What's most curious about it is that he had never seen me personally and, most importantly,  he didn't ask a single question  about my health and life habits. He didn't even ask abou...

One of the most fundamental principles of freedom of speech is the right to make public reviews of commercial products. In pretty much every single country where there's a right to free speech (and probably even a few that don't), product reviews are an  extremely  protected form of speech. It doesn't matter if they are positive or negative. The idea behind this protection is, of course, pretty simple: It's a form of consumer protection. Consumers have the right to know what they are buying by being able to know about the experiences that others have had with the product. If there's some kind of flaw or negative aspect to a product, consumers have the right to know before buying. Sellers and manufacturers cannot be expected to reveal every single aspect of their product, so protecting the right of people to publish their own reviews is extremely important. Which, of course, means that in most countries a company trying to sue a reviewer for giving a negative review ...

Recently the Spanish prime minister undermined once again the sovereignty and borders of the country by passing a law that gives amnesty to any person who arrives in the country by the sea, no questions asked. Literally tens of thousands of Moroccans immediately took advantage of this and started a literal full scale invasion of Ceuta and Melilla. That's not hyperbole, a figure speech, or exaggeration. Tens of thousands of foreigners entered those places en masse and immediately started doing what invading forces always do when they invade a country: They started looting stores and breaking into homes, breaking doors and windows. And where was the Spanish police when literally hundreds of invaders were breaking into and looting stores? Absolutely nowhere to be seen. In fact, the police forces were restricting the locals from doing anything about it, with video footage showing the cops literally beating Spanish citizens with batons. While doing literally nothing about the hordes of ...

The " motte-and-bailey " fallacy is an argumentative tactic where a larger questionable ideology, when challenged, is defended by retreating to a small portion of the ideology that's generally more accepted. The analogy is that in normal circumstances ("peace time") the ideology preaches all of its tenets, most of which are morally or otherwise questionable (in other words, it operates in the wider "bailey" area), but when questioned and challenged ("war time"), the apologist retreats to the more defensible much smaller area of the ideology (in other words, the fortified "motte" at the center). Here are some concrete examples of this very tactic used by the modern far left, which clarify how this tactic is actually being used in practice out there: Feminism Especially 10+ years ago (perhaps a bit less nowadays because the concept of "feminism" has got a bad reputation among the left, mainly because of J. K. Rowling ), when...

Or, perhaps, "theft" is not technically speaking the right term to use, because it implies that the action is illegal, which in these cases it might not technically be. However, it's an extremely common practice and it's tiresome. Whether one likes YouTube's copyright enforcement system or not, at least it does have the positive effect that if you create and upload an original video, if someone just downloads it and uploads it as-is on their own channel, you can take it down immediately when you notice. However, what happens when the footage is public domain, or in other ways not really falling under copyright of an entity who could take it down? One example of such footage is, in the United States, court camera videos: These are in the public domain by law, and thus anybody can distribute them as they want. There are also many other similar examples of footage created by the government or other entities that do not fall under copyright (or where the copyright is ...

If you watch, for example, this video by the YouTube channel Team Skeptic, where the author comments on yet another "sovereign citizen" who is foolishly representing himself in court, you'll notice how, particularly in one part of the video, he again and again insists that he "doesn't understand anything". He uses lots of other words that mean the same thing, but he just outright refuses to say that he "understands" a single thing. He "comprehends", he "grasps", he "knows", he yada yada yada, but most definitely and categorically he doesn't "understand" anything. This even though the judge quite clearly expresses that she herself doesn't understand why he is having such a huge problem with that word, and why he is playing that kind of word games. The judge makes it pretty clear that "understand" just means the same thing as to comprehend, to grasp, to know what's being said, there's...

Unlike many American far-leftist activists love to claim, the US does not have "hate speech" laws. So-called "hate speech" is not illegal because it's, still, considered to be speech protected by the First Amendment. Of course that doesn't stop cops and courts from prosecuting people for "hate speech" anyway. They just masquerade it as something else. As the saying goes, "the good thing about laws is that there are so many of them to choose from". It's the stalinistic principle of "show me the man and I'll show you the crime." Or, in this particular example, the woman. Some time ago a controversy arose when someone published a video of a white woman using the "N-word" against a child, as well as some random man who was loitering near the playground (not related to the child), in the city of Rochester, New York. Obviously that sent the far-leftists completely crazy. The city wanted to sue her because quite obvio...

Some time ago the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts , had installed a system called ShotSpotter , which is a series of directional microphones installed on building roofs, and computer systems able to detect if gunshots are being fired, and locate their position in the city, for rapid police response to possible shootings. Because the city in question is extremely leftist and, thus, filled with far-leftist activist zealots, those zealots came up with the conspiracy theory that this system could be used to spy on people and that it, somehow, puts black and brown people, trans people and so on in danger, and that it causes "overpolicing". Thus, they organized a protest against it at the city council, and one after another they argued that the system is dangerous, and that they don't need it for the community to be safe. The city placated to the zealots and removed the system. Two months later, on the 4th of July of 2026, a shooting happened, with the victim bleeding to death...

This argument is so asinine and so utterly silly that it feels like parody, or like a straw-man invented by anti-leftists (ie. something that some anti-leftists claim that pro-immigration leftists are saying even though they aren't). However, it's a real argument. And not just by some random anonymous twitter users, but actual elected politicians in the UK and some other countries. And the argument is: Without immigrants we wouldn't have exotic foods, like curry or falafel. And yes, those politicians are presenting that argument in all seriousness. It's not like they are lightening the mood with a joke, or doing a bit of self-parody or something like that. They are presenting it 100% seriously. It shouldn't even be necessary to explain why that's a completely asinine argument, but here we go anyway: Firstly, you don't need to import any immigrants in order to be able to eat foreign cuisine. This should be so utterly obvious that it shouldn't need to be e...

During the past 15-or-so years the United States has become astonishingly racist. And I truly mean it. Actual racism, actual racist discrimination by the establishment, by megacorporations, by large powerful institutions, by universities, by schools, everything. American universities have engaged in blatant and clear racial discrimination in admissions, even though for them it's actually illegal in the United States. For some reason the government has been very slow to react to it, even though it has been going on for at least 20 years. American corporations have also been engaging in clear and blatant racial discrimination for at least 15 years. According to recent statistics that examined the top 500 tech companies in the United States, only 6% of all new hires were white people, even though they account for over 80% of the population. This is not some kind of strange anomaly or coincidence, as it's very explicitly enforced by the higher-ups in these companies. For example, I...

Representative democracy is, by far, the best form of government that humanity has ever developed. While it may in a few cases fail to do so, in general it ensures that tyranny, dictatorships, oligarchies and oppressive regimes do not get in power, and that the rights and freedoms of people are maintained. The very concept of representative democracy, something that's clearly stated and enshrined into the Constitutions of many such countries, is that the government belongs to the people. While they are represented by a handful of elected representatives, ultimately the "ownership" and control of the government is in the hand of the people, who can choose by fair elections who will represent them in said government. If the current government is not doing what's best for the people and is becoming tyrannical and oppressive, the people can simply vote them out of the government at the next elections. (In general, at the most fundamental level, this system is enforced and...

(Note: Parts of this post are directly copied from another post, but I'm repeating it here because I wanted to create a succinct post about this subject that I can link to from other posts as a reference.) I have for quite a while now come to the serious conclusion that modern far-leftists are psychopaths. Actual  bona fide  psychopaths who are  incapable  of feeling true empathy. That's not a metaphor, or hyperbole, or an exaggeration, or just using the word as a random insult with no regard to what it actually means. I'm being 100% serious. If they had actual empathy, they would be at least bothered by over 40 million babies being murdered by their mothers and doctors every single year. Most of them are not. If they had actual empathy, they would not celebrate the murder of Charlie Kirk . Even if they heavily opposed what he was saying, they would heavily condemn his murder. If they had actual empathy, they would not consider 50 million people on their own sid...

I wrote earlier about a completely delusional American far-leftist activist who fled Los Angeles and moved to Canada on a temporary visa, in order to flee "fascist" America... only to find out that Canada was not the socialist paradise that she assumed it to be, and found herself quickly running out of her life savings because Canada wasn't actually giving her free money and a free apartment (because she wasn't an actual refugee, she was just an American in the country with a 6-month visa.) The entire saga is completely hilarious because of how delusional she is (and how much of a "main character syndrome" she is clearly suffering from.) Of course she isn't the only one. In another example a "trans" guy who was living in San Francisco, of all places (again, one of the most far-leftist places in the entire country), fled the "persecution" he was experiencing. What kind of "persecution", you might ask? The fact that, apparent...

During Biden's administration there were literally  millions  of migrants moving from the South American continent to the United States, through Mexico, and Mexico did very little to stop them. They just opened their borders and allowed millions of South American migrants to pass through, to their northern border. The country didn't care. Not their problem. But now that Trump has quite effectively closed the border, Mexico has found itself in quite the pickle: While perhaps not as many, there are still massive amounts of migrants trying to enter Mexico from the south. Problem is: Now they are stuck in Mexico because the US is not letting them in. Thus, now it's Mexico that's becoming flooded with illegal migrants from the south. The flow through has been blocked, so they are amassing in Mexico itself. And with them, all the related problems have been skyrocketing in the country. Nowhere to house the millions of illegal migrants, increased governmental tax-funded spendin...

The YouTube channel Don't Walk, Run! Productions recently (as of writing this) published a video where the author comments on a socialist recruitment webinar , where a socialist activist tries to explain and exalt the virtues of socialism, to try to convince people and recruit them to that political ideology. Ironically, that speech is so scary that it made my anti-socialist convictions even stronger than ever before. Not that I needed any convincing that socialism is a very, very bad idea, but that speech made that fact even clearer and stronger. Consider what she says that the goals of her political party are in the United States: * Violent revolution. While she doesn't say it directly outright, she very clearly implies that the democratic voting process is not good enough and the only way to establish the American Socialist Utopia is to bypass it and engage in violent revolution, whether the majority of people want it or not. She speaks in lengths about this revolution, with...