What grinds my gears

Consider the following news article title: The twist? The woman was arrested for fraud allegations, not for having the sticker. (She cannot be arrested for having such a sticker. It's not illegal.) The genius in the article title is that it is, technically speaking, 100% correct. The woman did have a "Fuck Trump" sticker on her truck, she was jailed, and the sheriff did threaten her with charges. Those are all true statements. Moreover, the title isn't actually, and technically speaking, making any connection between those claims. It's not claiming that one happened because of the other. But of course the title heavily implies the connection, and it's exactly the impression that the reader gets. The author of the article has plausible deniability ("I never claimed that one thing happened because of the other"), but it's still quite clearly designed to imply the connection, and to give the impression that there is a connection. I ...

Meet Denise Young Smith, Apple's diversity chief. She's being harassed by an angry mob online. Not only that, but she's being fired from her job because of that outcry. A black woman is being oppressed, harassed online, and fired from her job. It seems that the social justice warriors were right after all. I might have to revise my views on society. Perhaps the social justice warriors do have a point after all. There indeed is oppression of minority people. If a company like Apple is letting a black woman go as a result of her being a target of online abuse, there is no other conclusion. This is a real travesty. Oh... wait... Who exactly is doing the online harassment? A bunch of white nationalist neonazis? A bunch of American rednecks? Members of the KKK? Internet trolls? No. None of those. It's actually the social justice warriors who are the ones engaging in harassing her online. Wait. Weren't the social justice warriors supposed to defend minorit...

Glitch abuse is one of the quintessential techniques in speedrunning, in order to be able to complete the game faster than normally. Or, more precisely, glitch abuse has become a quintessential technique. It has not always been so. For example, in the early years of Speed Demos Archive (which started as a collection of Quake and Doom speedruns, but later opened to all games), out-of-bounds glitches were banned. The same rule applied in its then-major rival site, Twin Galaxies. It was deemed back then that glitching the game so that the player can go out of bounds, skipping most of a level, or even the entire game, was unfun and bypassed not only the level or game, but also the skills required to complete the game in the normal way. Of course one of the major hurdles in such a ban was a matter of definition . With some games it was relatively unambiguous what counted as an "out-of-bounds glitch" and what didn't. With other games, however, it became fuzzier and fuzzi...

I have written before how Poland seems to be the only EU country that has not gone completely insane, and actually has the balls to say "no" to economic migrants, and to the EU, even at the threat of sanctions. It seems that Poland is also the only European government that actually listens to its people. The reason why Poland has said "no" to immigrants is because 75% of the citizens said "no" to immigrants, and the government complied. Of course the other European countries don't like this at all. Recently Poland held a normal annual independence celebration, with something like 75 thousand people participating in it on the streets. Much of European media are calling it a "nazi demonstration". Seriously. Poland was invaded by nazi Germany, and suffered a big amount of loss because of it. The celebration in question is a normal one held every year, and lots of people participate in it, including war veterans who fought against the nazis...

When the European Union was being advertised to European citizens, it was guaranteed that it was merely an economic agreement between the member states that would make travel and trading easier, and that's it. Each country would retain its independence and sovereignty. The fears that many had that the EU would become a nation all of its own, with each member state pretty much losing their independence and own government, is unfounded. Or so they said. Some of the signs of a country's sovereignty are having its own currency, its own supreme government and justice system, its own constitution, and its own army. The currency thing has long been gone, of course. The EU has become the top legislative entity controlling every member state, dictating the policies of all countries, and sanctioning countries that do not follow them. (With what authority? Who knows. But goes to show the what the status of sovereignty is). The EU tried to enact its own unified constitution for all mem...

The current leftist-feminist social justice cult ideology is often called with the moniker "regressive left" (as a counter-point to their own claims that they are "progressive"). But what does that mean? What's so "regressive" about it? I think this article is the perfect example of what it means, titled: This looks like something you could have perhaps seen in the 1950's America. Even as-is. As a society we have made great progress in the past 50 years, but the "progressive" left is trying very hard to drag us back to the era of open blatant racism and racial discrimination. But wait, perhaps I'm just ripping a headline out of its context. Maybe the article is exactly how ridiculous such a statement is, and criticizes people who would think like that? Or perhaps it's just a parody? No. It's serious. The article says, for example: "As against our gauzy national hopes, I will teach my boys to have profound d...

So there's this satirical publication called The Onion that makes up outrageous stories to trick people, and they published a story about Facebook planning to ask people to send them nude photos of themselves, in order to combat "revenge porn", and people left and right are falling for it, and... wait... What? It isn't a satirical article made up by The Onion? It's real? Facebook actually is doing that? It's really hard to believe, but all major news networks are writing about it, including USA Today , CNBC , The Guardian , The Telegraph , CNN , Fortune , and the list goes on and on and on. Maybe they all fell for the same prank? But if they did, I can't find any evidence it's so. Usually if you make a google search for something, you'll probably quickly find if it's real or not, even if it's being parroted by major news networks. Some article or press release denouncing it as a hoax. But I can't find anything. For all I know,...