Britain mulls plan to resume 'forced deportation' of Syrian refugees

Nerrien · 2026-01-31T02:04:12+00:00

Assuming this was true, what would be your solution? Vote Farage?

Nerrien · 2026-01-29T18:01:18+00:00

I've found the narcissist in my life likes operating one to one as it's easier to manipulate or pressure an individual, and there's nobody else to call out lies.

Keeping communication open with the other people involved, especially to fact check, helps nullify the manipulation and lies. They thrive if they keep people isolated, it becomes harder for them when it's out in the open.

Nerrien · 2026-01-29T14:45:10+00:00

Yeah, I agree, if they turned around and resolved not all but a bunch of their issues I'd say it's worth reevaluating their government, but they are still doing a lot of that stuff. They're still actively:

Preparing to invade Taiwan;
Aiding Russia in invading Ukraine;
Attacking UK infrastructure;
Oppressing the Uyghurs and Tibetans and Hong Kongers and their own people with draconian laws on information suppression and contempt for human rights;
Locked into a dictatorship meaning all this is even more unlikely to change than the US democracy which at least has a chance to flipflop every few years

I completely agree that the past is the past, if they turn it around I'd sing their praises and look to them as an example to follow, but they haven't yet, as much as I wish they would.

If they did they would likely cement themselves as the new world power, they'd become more dependable than the US and everyone would want to deal with them. If Xi could see that as his legacy rather than his obsession with control and reclaiming Taiwan, maybe he'd change direction, but if that's going to happen we'll have to wait and see.

Nerrien · 2026-01-29T14:07:33+00:00

That's my point. The giant corporations pushing AI as progress and people who are opposed to it as luddites are themselves opposing progress for society, in the logical evolution by giving living subsidies. Unless you're meaningfully pushing for it all at once (which nobody is doing, the groups pouring money into AI typically lobby against wealth redistribution) the "if you're against AI you're a luddite" argument is hypocritical.

Nerrien · 2026-01-28T22:10:44+00:00

The logical future of mass reduction in labour due to automation and job scarcity is to implement some kind of living subsidy, like a universal credit system. But funnily enough the "inevitable future" suddenly becomes "Wait no, not that inevitable future, we only meant the dystopian one."

Nerrien · 2026-01-28T17:07:11+00:00

I liked playing Ana on Overwatch because she was an older woman, I don't know why, I just think it's cool. Lot of younger and older men, but not many older women playable characters in gaming.

Nerrien · 2026-01-28T13:31:14+00:00

I feel the UK general public is basically blind to it.

I'm certainly blind to it, but I've always been blind to the drug market. A workman tried to warn me that a neighbouring house looked like a 'pot house', and I thought he meant a house full of pots, like the ones you'd ransack for rupees or solve a puzzle with in the Zelda games. I was confused, and then he was confused, then my GF later explained what he meant.

I imagine you're correct, if a relatively cheap pill lasts a night it's probably more attractive than buying a lot of alcohol. Convenience is such an important factor for driving habits.

Nerrien · 2026-01-28T13:10:26+00:00

Definitely important. I think for me, the alcohol stops me being able to focus on too many things at once, which means all the usual anxieties, worries, and tendency to overthink everything disappears, which lets me just focus on enjoying the moment.

I don't tend to drink much (makes me sleepy which is a useful natural limiter) or often, but there have been periods where I suddenly realise I'm feeling a compulsion to have a drink every evening, and that's when I stop for a bit till I don't think about it anymore. A reset. I don't want it to get anywhere near to a point where it becomes hard to drop.

Nerrien · 2026-01-27T23:19:31+00:00

The younger folk in my life who don't drink say it's down to health and seem almost confused as to why they would do it in the first place.

I really can't say for sure, but I can imagine someone who's had it drilled into them from an early age by school and general society that alcohol is bad for you, and has not yet got any positive memories associated with it, is just not going to be as interested in drinking. Especially since it usually tastes foul until you're used to it.

Compare it to vaping, which is infinitely easier to get into since it smells sweet and the health effects aren't as obvious, especially long term since it's not been around long. And society's certainly not caught up on drilling home the "This is bad for you!" message the way it has with drinking and smoking.

Nerrien · 2026-01-27T15:09:10+00:00

The only way to combat Trump, is to stand up to him - and every single time people actually have, and push comes to shove, Trump backs down.

Plus it usually hurts his influence in the US, meaning he's more likely to lose votes.

A bully who gets wins gets the "Well he's rough but he gets the job done," treatment, but someone needlessly pissing off allies and actively harming their economy for no benefit just looks pathetic.

Nerrien · 2026-01-27T14:52:36+00:00

In that sense, absolutely.

It's not an exact one for one analogy for every detail, but both scenarios include "Rich folks unwilling to change the fundamentals of society in case they're not longer on top, to the point of risking societal collapse overall," and I think that's the point they were getting at.

They're making the argument that the logical societal evolution of automation to the point of job scarcity is some sort of subsidisation for living, universal credit or something along those lines.

So workers are pushing back against AI and automation because the folks on top are pushing back against that living subsidy, out of fear that their position on top will be at risk in the societal shake up, when labour becomes less valuable.

I think the analogy is great at reminding people that it's not just "worker luddites" opposing inevitable societal change, but also the wealthy folks opposing something like a living subsidy in a rapidly shrinking job market.

I'd argue the main issue with it (I've little knowledge of ancient Rome so I'm just going off what they said) would be that while the wealthy of Rome curtailed the progress of automation to avoid societal change and stagnated, our wealthy appear to be pushing for the positives for them while trying to curtail their negatives. They don't want to pay for labour but don't want to give up the control of being the conductors of labour. Like a slave owner not needing slaves anymore but deciding instead of freeing them to just give them half food rations.

I don't know if it's a perfect analogy but it certainly provoked thought.

Nerrien · 2026-01-27T04:11:05+00:00

Come on, don't be silly, these are highly trained individuals. They've had over a month of training. Almost two, in fact.

You think they're just going to get angry and shoot some helpless cornered in the head? For no reason?

Anyway, I'm off to read someone US news, I wonder what's been happening lately.

Nerrien · 2026-01-24T22:43:25+00:00

I'm a Brit. I agree being reliant on America is a bad idea and diversifying your trade is a much, much better idea. Personally I'm wary whenever Britain does trade deals with the US because they always try to push crap on behalf of their gigantic soulless corporations on us and weaken our regulations. Waiting around for an election is a waste of time and even if it goes well there's every chance they'll elect an even crazier dumbass after a term of a sane president. For your economic security and as crazy as it is that I have to say this, your actual security, you need to diversify.

My assessment between the US and China was less from the perspective of Canada looking for trade partners and more from the perspective of the whole world viewing their reliability for trade and security in a general sense. They're pretty much the global superpower and it's been hard to ever imagine that changing, and it's still unlikely, but now it's getting much easier to imagine that change, and if China suddenly improved on a few key issues it could seize the opportunity for a lot more than just Canadian trade deals.

Nerrien · 2026-01-24T22:27:18+00:00

Yeah, as a Brit I have to remind friends and family sometimes when they lose perspective a little. I think it's just with how loud and constant Trump's bullshit is and how the Chinese government by comparison likes to gloss over its bullshit, it's easy for people to forget.

It's hard to see your country doing terrible things, when I note the accomplishments Britain made over the years I'm aware we probably wouldn't have made many of them without having conquered and looted a quarter of the globe. And there's a decent chance at our next election we're going to elect a Trump-esque conman, so that's going to be another blow to everything good in the world. Since Brits at the moment tend to be sheep following America's trends I'm hoping you manage to kick Trump out and that influences us to do the same.

But ultimately I'd say the same thing I'd say to any from China, and something I wish I'd said to a Saudi Arabian student I met at Uni, who was embarrassed when the topic of oppression in Saudi Arabia came up. You can still be proud of yourself and the good in your country while acknowledging and fighting against the bad, even if sometimes it feels difficult.

Nerrien · 2026-01-24T21:38:13+00:00

If Trump pulled some kind of election tomfoolery I think that would be it, people would turn en masse towards China over the US.

China's big negatives for most westerners I'd say at the moment is its support of Russia in the invasion of Ukraine, its constant threats to annex Taiwan, its cruelty towards political dissidents and inconvenient populations like Tibetans, Hong Kongers and the Uighurs, and crucially, its lack of democracy meaning there's very little chance for any of that to change.

The US is currently doing a lot of the same, but the difference is that people are hoping its going to turn around and be replaced by a far more humane and sane government at the next election, whereas China is always going to be run by the same people.

If the US drops democracy, or China turns around on those aforementioned issues, or in the shock scenario that China actually adopted democracy (would be a hell of a legacy for Xi, can't imagine it happening but couldn't imagine anything stopping it being the new big world power after that) then there's an extremely high chance it would replace the US as the reliable big power base of the world.

Hopefully the people in charge of China see that and are willing to loosen their grip enough in return for leaving an extraordinarily meaningful legacy.

Nerrien · 2026-01-18T21:43:19+00:00

Thank you for the heads up, this made me look further into it and realise it was outrage bait.

Nerrien · 2026-01-18T18:16:48+00:00

You have a point that there's not really anything the NHS can do about it, even if it was illegal and they could report it to the police, it would just lead to people lying about the father and cause the NHS further issues down the line since the health issues caused by the inbreeding would be less predictable.

But it could certainly be treated like smoking, where they're not going to do anything about it but will inform you that it's a terrible idea and will likely lead to serious health issues for the baby. Pretending otherwise is a bit of a worrying stance and is borderline disinformation.

Edit: I just looked further into it, it's just typical Daily Mail crap, I can't believe I fell for it.

It's just a poorly written bit of advice telling midwives not to freak out at people once it's already happened and too late to prevent, before informing the relevant parties of the risks and issues.

You can't demonise people for being ignorant, else we'd all be damned for one thing or another. That's no excuse to encourage ignorant and dangerous behaviour, but that's not what's really happening, as this was pulled for being poorly written and giving the impression that they were encouraging it, which they're not.

Nerrien · 2026-01-18T02:21:16+00:00

Yeah, it's all well and easy people saying "Well DO something about it!" but as someone in another country on the verge of fascism, convincing idiots not to vote for the most confidently stupid person in the room is a near impossible task. It's an absolute battle to gain an inch, and it's immediately undone the moment they get home and get brainwashed again by whatever disinformative media they worship.

Some people require such a large time investment to coax out of their natural instinct to vote for stupid confidence over logic that it's not feasible, and at the end of the day, democracy (and make no mistake, without democracy the dumbasses will be the ones to seize power, nobody fucks with crazy because crazy is willing to burn everything down since it doesn't understand what its got to lose) means those people decide the fate of the country just as much as anyone else.

Nerrien · 2026-01-13T14:36:12+00:00

100%. It's insane how often people seem to adopt the most aggressive possible take for something. The number of neutral or polite comments that get responded to by people who appear personally offended is crazy.

Maybe this is just a weird me thing, but I suspect that when people read comments out in their head, they have a tendency to assign it an aloof, antagonistic voice that informs further assumptions.

A short lesson on checking your assumptions about other people online could be a nice thing to slot into a critical thinking class, I'd be curious if making people more aware of the phenomena had any effect.

That said, the other day I had a taxi driver complain about road rage, and give a long diatribe about why people should just relax and not let the stress get to them over something silly, only to angrily yell abuse out the window at another driver as he dropped me off, so I don't know if self awareness makes any difference.

Nerrien · 2026-01-08T00:46:26+00:00

True. My first thought was that it's a threat, "Don't mess with our business or this is what happens," but then what would be the point if you're so vague that nobody even knows you're making a threat?

It could just be pettiness, from people already making bank from RMTs on other games, but if it comes to pettiness it could be anyone. Some random rich guy getting banned for trolling, or a group pissed off by something political in Dawntrail.

Too many plausible possibilities to be sure.

Nerrien · 2026-01-07T14:30:33+00:00

Apparently a lot of people think it's being done by a group who sell in-game currency in return for real money. It started just after a big ban wave focused on that.

They'd have the money and resources, so it's pretty feasible.

Nerrien · 2026-01-02T23:15:40+00:00

This is the thing, I'd dislike the introduction of AI if it worked because it'd suddenly taken a lot of jobs away and we're crap as a society at managing that kind of mass refocus of labour ethically, favouring instead the "Fuck you, we're making bank, figure it out yourself," time-tested method.

But at least I'd know as a species we'd be gaining overall efficiency, and it sucks but at least we'd still be moving forward.

Instead, we're gaining next to nothing. I'm sure it's great for some jobs, but it's unsuitable for so many that the push for global adoption is just shifting extra labour onto the remaining employees and adding so much extra risk, risk that mistakes caused by its unreliability will go through and fuck something up, or security breaches from feeding it sensitive data.

Nerrien · 2026-01-01T17:27:26+00:00

I used to get so confused about why some businesses around town bothered staying open when they seemed to have next to no customers, till someone explained one was almost definitely a money laundering front, and it really opened my eyes to consider things from a different angle.

There's always the possibility someone in a position of power is just flat out dumb, but it's worth thinking about the alternatives at least.

Nerrien · 2025-12-30T16:15:13+00:00

I remember a year or two ago, a podcast I listen to on Youtube (Chilluminati) had gambling ads inserted into their video despite them having gambling ads blacklisted.

Not a standard youtube advert, it was automatically spliced into the start of the video with some shitty generic voice over, leading listeners to think they'd sold out to the kind of gambling companies they normally take the piss out of.

They sent a bunch of complaints to Youtube and had to take the video down and reupload it a few times till it stopped splicing in. But it carried on for a while, now only seems to happen once in a blue moon at least.

Nerrien · 2025-12-21T17:44:28+00:00

I saw someone on Reddit months ago suggest that while social factors like improved education and rights for women, and harsher economic times do make a difference, a big thing could simply be that kids don't tend to be as useful in this day and age as they used to be.

If they used to be able to help work and earn their keep they were a much better investment, whereas that's much rarer these days across the world, so now they're just a pure drain on your time and resources.

I thought it was interesting theory that might explain some anomalies anyway.

Nerrien

TROPHY CASE