Let me tell you why you suck. And all of you art, movie, music and etcritics can get in an orderly line as well.

If you want a tl;dr version: YOU SUCK BECAUSE YOU CANNOT BE OBJECTIVE AND THEREFORE YOUR OPINION MEANS NOTHING.

But sure, you want a longer version because you want arguments. Fine!

Let’s say you’re an aspiring art critic. You see Mona Lisa for the first time in your life. Your breath is taken away, that painting is absolutely the most precious thing you’ve ever seen. You write poetry about it. You base your thesis on her mysteriouser and mysteriouser smile (cried Alice). And then, somebody shows you a completely new painting. Suddenly, Mona Lisa looks like a cheap whore. With no eyebrows. But your thesis is already out. So what do you do? Write a new one? Patch the previous one up? Or admit that your taste changed and Mona Lisa was great until you saw this better thing.

Let’s say you’re a food critic. And, for example, your mother died 5 days ago, and you go into a restaurant to review their food because you need to keep on living. They serve your favourite dish. They bring it to your table, you taste it and it’s NOTHING LIKE YOUR MOTHER USED TO MAKE IT. How dare they? SHE DIED! I know, this is a bit far-fetched, but guess what - things like that happen. They don’t even have to be so extreme.

You begin your career as a food critic. You visit 100 restaurants and give your opinions. 300 restaurants and rate them. You then visit your 5000th restaurant and rate it. Can you objectively say that your rating of the first 100 is still as valid? Do you even remember them? Can you compare the first meal you ate with your 5000th meal? Did your taste change? Which one was better? Oh, I guess you should revisit all of the restaurants and rate them again. But by then you’ll have 10000 ratings and be really fucked.

Let’s say you’re an X critic! Unless there is an idea of a perfect X somewhere out there, in the Platonic wild, you have NOTHING to base your reviews on. Except your own taste. Which sucks because it’s not mine.

People are obsessed with showing how unique of a snowflake they are, but we still have people who are supposedly qualified to tell other people what’s OBJECTIVELY good and what’s not. This restaurant overcooks their pasta? Well, what if I LIKE OVERCOOKED PASTA? Maybe that’s the best restaurant in the world for me? Your rating of 3/10 means nothing.

I mean, fine, it’s a job and you get to travel and taste stuff and pretend that you know what you’re doing and somebody will realize that you have a similar taste to theirs and follow your ratings because you’re compatible. BUT STOP ACTING LIKE IT’S AN OBJECTIVE FACT AND THAT YOU’RE AN EXPERT EATER (or whatever). No, one meal is not objectively better than the other, unless one is poisonous and rat infested and the other is sprinkled with tears of an angel and heals cancer.

I give critics 1 objective measure out of 10. I also apologize for the high amount of CAPS. But it was the right thing to do.

It really doesn’t. Even my spell check underlines it. It’s just a buzzword that makes less informed people scared of the Internet. Nobody can harm your children online. If you’re raising them properly, of course.

If someone beats up or insults your kid in school, that’s bullying. If someone beats up your kid in school and then writes “You stupid motherfucker, why don’t you kill yourself?” on his Facebook wall, that’s NOT cyberbullying. That’s just plain old bullying with a technological twist. Someone you have real life contact with CANNOT cyberbully you. They know you, they bully you in real life, and just continue online.

If they know your home address, does that mean they could letterbully you? They could shit in your mailbox, perhaps?

The last, but not the least - if someone is harassing you or your child online, and you don’t know them in real life - JUST FUCKING IGNORE THEM. Block them, remove, unfriend, unfollow and a billion other ways. And teach your kid to do the same. This is not cyberbullying, it’s maybe kinda sorta trolling. And trolls are easily avoidable if you don’t get invested.

Be responsible, don’t let your kid hang online with zero supervision. Don’t intrude their privacy, but ask them what they’re doing online, who they are talking to, show some interest. If your child trusts you, they’ll open up. Don’t wait for puberty and then suddenly try to be a parent. It’s too late. Case study: Jessi Slaughter

Internet is vicious, evil, raw, honest and a great reflection of what humans really are when they’re “anonymous”. It’s also pretty great. Don’t be scared, nobody can harm you through the screen. And if someone commits suicide because of comments received online, they’re doing everybody a favour.

If your answer was anything except for “me”, you might want to ask yourself a couple of questions:

1. Have I ever left my PC filled with personal information with somebody I don’t trust?

2. Have I ever left my PC filled with personal information with somebody I trust, but I shouldn’t?

3. Have I ever left my PC filled with personal information with somebody I trust, and I think I should? (you shouldn’t)

If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, your data was (most probably) compromised. Yes, your chat logs, your pictures, your other kind of pictures, your web history, perhaps even passwords.

“BUT NO!”, you say! “I protected my files, they were in a secret folder somewhere. I also hid them.”

Sure, that could work. And for the most part could even be enough if your PC is being fixed by someone who’s fixing 100 computers per day and couldn’t be bothered. But if it’s your friend? They sure do have the time. They also know a lot more about computers than you because otherwise he wouldn’t be fixing yours. They probably know all of the usual “tricks”. Windows search dialog even has a “Search hidden files and folders” checkbox. You really don’t have to be a hacker to find “hidden” files on a PC.

I made a little anonymous poll asking this question: Would you go through personal files on a PC your friend gave you to fix?

Haven’t gotten many replies because I tried to avoid sites such as 4chan and this one because one is full of immoralfags, and the other is full of moralfags (don’t know what’s worse TBH), but the percentages remained the same from the 4th vote (now 34): 75% of people WOULD. Yup, that’s right. 3 out of 4 of your friends would suck your laptop dry looking for personal stuff.

And it’s such a perfect crime. You gave up your PC voluntarily. They’re actually HELPING you! You think your files are hidden and safe, or you just trust him\her and don’t worry. And if they’re intelligent enough to keep their mouth shut, you will never EVER find out that all of your personal everything has been compromised. Chat logs, diaries, pictures. And it can be used against you!

I wonder what would happen if your friendship with such a person fell apart. Or you earned a LOT of money. Blackmail? Posting your stuff on 4chan? Something worse?

The bottom line is: either give your PC to someone you completely trust (for example, someone who already DOES have access to your private “data”), or just learn how to properly back up and CLEAN\ENCRYPT your PC before giving it to someone shady (and everyone is). The best thing you could probably do is to learn how to fix your computer yourself.

Yup, that’s right. Learn how to back up data, how to install the OS of your choice, install drivers and all the applications you’re using. Why? Because you’ll self-improve by learning something new. Because you won’t depend on others. And because the only person fondling your stuff will be you.

This is an awesome question and I’m glad nobody asked. So let me answer!

It definitely ain’t easy, let me tell you that. First of all, if you have no inspiration, you have to make stuff up as you write. And making stuff up as you write can be a little bit of a problem because you have no inspiration!

Most common causes of inspiration loss are:

1. It’s late and you’re tired, but you don’t want to go to bed yet.
2. You’re listening to non-inspiring music.
3. You spent most of the afternoon doing nothing. And if you do nothing, nothing does you.
4. Seriously, what song is this?
5. There is something wrong with your operating system so you’re focused on fixing that instead on getting some inspiration.
6. Drug abuse
7. Not liking Seinfeld

So, first you have to identify which of these applies to you. If it’s number 7, I probably hate you.

How to prevent inspiration from abandoning you?

I guess I’d have to say - make a HABIT of doing creative stuff even when you don’t feel like it. Write every day, even if it’s stupid. Draw every day, even if it comes out wrong. Sing every day, even if you neighbours want you dead. Inspiration is a bit of a playing-hard-to-get cheap whore. It seems everyone around you had their way with her, and yet she’s just out of reach.

You have to show that bitch that you can do without her, and then she’ll come crawling back to you.

This is how you write a post without inspiration. Not that it’s any good. But it’s WRITTEN!

Keyword: habit!

Dear Mr Linux Mint Person,

I wish to register a complaint.

For many years I’ve been a great user of your distribution. I’ve helped people, rarely complained, enforced Linux upon unsuspecting victims and am constantly spreading the great word of Linux Mint. However, due to recent events, unfortunately I have to drop you from my project because I’ve never been more disappointed in ANY decision by ANY distribution so far.

Canonical made me use Unity much earlier than it was ready. It was a bad move. Gnome team made a complete mess with Gnome-shell, it was a bad move. But what you have done is unforgivable.

I’m a simple man. I use Linux for social networking, a bit of blogging and do an occasional photo edit in Gimp. I write my thesis in Writer and sometimes use terminal for practice. But now it’s impossible for me to do so in Linux Mint because of your poor decision making. HOW ON EARTH AM I SUPPOSED TO USE A DISTRIBUTION CALLED “NADIA” WHEN ALL I CAN THINK IS HOW IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN “NINA”?

Maybe you don’t see this as a serious flaw in your system, but let me demonstrate in how many ways this affects me, and I’m sure a lot of other people in a similar situation. My girlfriend’s name is Nina, and I was really looking forward to the “Nina” (it was by far the most suggested name on the forums) named distro because she is a Windows user and it would have been a GREAT opportunity to convince her to try something named after her. Do you see what kind of a mess you made? Am I supposed to use something called “Nadia” (good luck with that name, seriously) and just ignore the fact that MILLIONS of people who are right now dating Ninas of the world have a system NOT named after their significant others?

I hope you do realize this is a serious issue and it’s not late to fix the error of your ways.

Thank you,
sincerely, Kristijan!

What do these three have in common, you’re wondering? Well, the third worked on the second, but not on the first, on my laptop. The answer just rolls off your tongue, I know.

My Dell Inspiron showed zero interest in allowing me to use Bluetooth under Linux. I never use Bluetooth, to be honest, but it bugged me that it works flawlessly under Windows.

And then IT happened. I booted into Windows months later (really never use them, just wanted to update the antiviral applications) and was playing around with bluetooth and LEFT IT TURNED ON before rebooting back to Linux (my occasional OCD usually makes me turn it off because… well, because!). To my surprise, Bluetooth was now working in Linux as well.

I’m not sure what exactly Windows do to Bluetooth when you turn the adaptor off, but it survives rebooting and also interferes with other operating systems.

There are many posts about this online so I won’t go into technical details, I just wanted to tell you my story because FUCK YOU WINDOWS. And yeah, maybe it helps someone who is desperate like me to prove that everything works just as well under Linux, although it’s never ever being used. Seriously, Bluetooth?

I spend a lot of time online. A LOT. But, at the same time, I don’t read many articles. My surfing is active and totally deficient of any orderly attention. I scroll through dozens and dozens of article titles and read none of them. It’s boring, I’d have to stop my random clicking and read? No wai!

This is where Pocket comes in. Formerly known as “Read it later”, Pocket is a small application for the Android platform (maybe for the iOS as well, but I don’t care for them so check it out yourselves), also available for the Firefox browser and it’s integrated into some other applications such as Lightread.

What does it do, you wonder? It’s simple, all it does is save pages of your choosing for reading later (thus the former name, duh!) and it presents them in an easy to read article mode.

So now I can browse through the articles like a maniac I usually am and casually mark the ones I actually would like to read if my scattered mind would allow it, then they get synced (not only synced, but DOWNLOADED so you can read offline if no interwebz are available) with my phone and are available for reading wherever and whenever I feel concentrated and smart.

But to be honest, that’s usually the toilet.

I give Pocket 5/5 generic rating measurements for allowing me to read again.

Much like the title of this post, Windows 8 is an attempt to come off as revolutionary and edgy, but it fails miserably. I’ve been using Windows 8 in a virtual machine so I won’t comment on their performance, assuming that it suffered greatly from RAM and CPU limitations.

But, from a usability perspective, it’s one of the worst user experiences I’ve.. well, experienced. Let’s consider messaging for a bit. Messaging is a full screen application where you can chat with people from whichever account you’ve set up. Nice. But if you want to, I don’t know, watch YouTube while chatting with someone, you can’t. Because it’s full screen. And you have to use it as such. So, basically, Metro apps force you to run them full screen and force you to disregard the fact that you maybe have a huge monitor that could simultaneously display a shitload of stuff. You also get two versions of Internet Explorer, one for metro and one for the old school desktop. Because one IE just wasn’t enough. Of course, one is locked to full screen, and the other is resizeable like application windows SHOULD BE.

But sure, there is a “desktop mode”. Without the start button. Because the “metro home screen” is the start menu. But you have to press the WinKey (aka Super) to get to it. They could have easily left the start button where it was, but give it a new function (launch metro screen). That would make too much sense, probably. There are more than a couple user experiences available online showing that people who are less skilled in using computers have absolutely NO IDEA how to get back to the home screen.

Also, metro applications insist on horizontal scrolling. It’s great on a touch screen, I assume. But it’s really unintuitive on the desktop. But that is actually consistent with the rest of the UX, which is also pretty unintuitive. So, points for being consistent!

I have nothing else to say, it’s a huge step back in productivity and usability and I really really hope they’ll implement an option to turn metro off because otherwise I can’t see this as a desktop OS. And I’m not the only one. So, wake up Microsoft!

First of all, let me just say that I am aware that marijuana can help people with serious illnesses by reducing symptoms and easing pain. Also, I agree that it should be made possible for people with these conditions to easily and legally obtain marijuana.

THAT BEING SAID, I’m really sick of the usual type of person speaking up for legalization of cannabis. Why? Because they’re not ill, they’re not activists concerned for well being of other people. They’re usually hippies that can’t find anything funny in Family Guy unless they’re stoned out of their freaking mind.

Sure, they won’t admit that, and you end up sounding like a jerk if you even try to point out that all they’re doing is finding a way to easily score some more pot because “it’s for the sick people, dude”. Yeah, it’s medicinal and YES everybody knows that, but your motives are really really really obvious. Dude.

PS - although everyone keeps saying that it has no serious side-effects, luckily I’ve met more than one person who are regular users and are shells of their former selves so I think otherwise. Is it from using, or abusing? Maybe they’re just sick :(

PPS - I meant the first couple of seasons of Family Guy, nobody can find anything funny in the latter ones.

This post was supposed to be a review of “The Exorcism of Emily Rose”, but since I have nothing clever to say about the movie, I’ll address the larger issue at state here:

DEMONS ARE FUCKING RETARDED.

In the aforementioned movie, we have a smart, intelligent and capable young girl. Then these 6 fuckers posses her and suddenly she’s good for shit. Apparently, demons (and also Lucifer) have this advanced plan of swearing in Latin and vomiting on sheets until… well, until there are no more of those pesky sheets, I guess!!

Even if I allow the existence of demons and devil and all that goes with it, I’m still not convinced that while the good side has God and Jesus and angels and they’re doing these amazing things, the other (EEEEEVIL!!!) side is incapable of nothing else than possessing young girls and making them swear in languages they don’t know while vomiting different kinds of soup. It’s kinda redundant. And WHY?

And we’re supposed to believe that “evil is out there” and that “demons can get you” and that good and evil are in balance and that it will be an uncertain battle in the end? They are SO NOT in balance. Unless all good guys are doing is just laundry.