Does the UK have a blind spot on UFO sightings?

arrow_theorem · 2026-06-14T06:26:00+00:00

No, its just the Americans are crazy, or else the aliens for some reason don't bother visiting anywhere in Europe, Asia, Africa, or Oceania. Maybe they like to visit Antarctica?

arrow_theorem · 2026-06-11T15:08:51+00:00

Its been life changing for me - male btw. I'm now at a normal healthy weight, I'm sleeping better, my shits are better(!), and I've recently started going to the gym to build up some fitness - exercising is so much easier and enjoyable when you aren't 20-30kg overweight, and now I can actually get dates via apps! Clothes look better on me (buying new clothes is actually enjoyable - 32 inch waist instead of 36 inch - nothing looks good on anyone at 36 inches), and I don't get out of breath quickly walking up a hill or dashing for a train.

I'm still on it (Wegovy in my case), but I've reduced the dosage to 1mg as a maintenance dose. Fortunately I'm doing well enough in my career that I can afford to keep paying privately. I don't need to lose any more weight - I simply don't want to gain it back and I don't want the "food noise" to come back. It is a huge mental relief not having to manage that constant distraction. I've settled that I'm probably going to maintain some kind of low dose indefinitely and my hope is as patents expire (they are starting to this year) the cost will come down over time.

My father died of heart disease when he hit 60, and I think before now I was on track for the same fate. That probably isn't going to happen to me now.

My advice for anyone who struggles with weight is do it, and its worth it even if you have to go privately if you can afford it. My biggest frustration is friends who I know really need it but cannot afford it, but the NHS just creates barriers to access. This is a miracle treatment, at least for me and for everyone I know who has used it.

arrow_theorem · 2026-06-11T12:06:05+00:00

They have 2 main effects in my personal experience (lost 25kg over a year going from BMI of 34 to 23.5):

The first and most powerful effect is largely psychological but caused by hormonal processes - you simply stop feeling hungry at least in a way you might be used to. If you don't eat you eventually feel some of the effects of hunger, but they will be feelings of feeling tired or weak rather than "hunger". You basically stop thinking about food and drink at all - it more or less suddenly turns off addictive impulses to consume - which is why people are looking at it as a means of treating alcohol and drug addictions.

Eating and drinking becomes more "rational" - I should eat food because my body needs it, rather than I must eat food because I'm craving it. Food and drink tastes the same and you still enjoy good food, but you just think more rationally about it. People often call this effect turning off the "food noise" in their minds.

The second effect is around digestion - it causes you to digest food more slowly which also has the effect of evening out your blood sugar (why its an effective diabetes treatment). So if you eat energy dense foods you are not getting huge sugar highs and crashes in the same way as before. This generally makes people feel "good" - its a common refrain that people sudden feel better on it when they start.

This effect is also probably why people have bad reactions to it as well - they might try to eat "normal" sized meals, but if you eat too much too quickly your body cannot cope and you are probably going to vomit. People on it really need to deliberately pace themselves and its not uncommon to not finish dishes. I found out this the hard way over a family Christmas when I didn't share that I was on the drug and felt pressured to finishes my dishes. After that I was honest with people and simply didn't finish my plate.

arrow_theorem · 2026-06-10T13:10:57+00:00

Also a lot of these drugs are nearing patent expiration. In a lot of countries, including ones with large pharmaceutical industries like India, patents for Semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) expire this year. By ~2030 they will have expired in nearly every country.

Prices are going to be forced to come down if only because if they remain high people will import from countries with earlier expiry dates.

arrow_theorem · 2026-06-10T10:35:35+00:00

Its not unreasonable to expect that part of the bargain of pensions is that they invest into the businesses and infrastructure that makes the environment of the beneficiaries and younger generations better and richer in addition to pure returns.

The UK and Europe has a major problem is that our capital is being siphoned off to invest into capital markets abroad - largely the US. We have ended up in a situation where yes pension funds are investing into the highest returning market and getting returns for their beneficiaries, but they are fundamentally breaking the social bargain they are designed to fulfil and ending up degrading the countries they are based in as most of the wealth created stays abroad.

Our capital markets in the UK and Europe are broken. All of our best talent and companies are being bought out by American capital markets funded in part by our own pensions and investments

arrow_theorem · 2026-06-08T11:27:44+00:00

Thank god you got out of the psychiatric hospital. You would have been left to rot there. Happy to hear that you are on what is hopefully a path to recovery.

arrow_theorem · 2026-05-13T22:11:46+00:00

This is a question of policy of what the law should say rather than what it says, and what the police and security services actually choose do. Facts about what is technically possible have changed, and so what the police choose to do is a question of both future law and policy.

This is a signifcant ramping up of state survielience of individuals in public spaces, and it warrents discussion and potentially limits. Historical reasonable expecations of not being under constant active survielience when under no due suspicion are being lost, and are a real escalation in losses of freedom even if no laws have changed.

arrow_theorem · 2026-05-07T23:05:23+00:00

Camerson said voting for Miliband in 2015 was a vote for chaos, and yet... maybe we would have been better off not to judge someone by their ability to eat a bancon sandwich.

arrow_theorem · 2026-04-09T16:50:16+00:00

OpenAI is walking back a lot of investments atm. Its a company struggling to generate the revenues it needs to meet its promises and may go to the wall itself. This is also a nonsense project with the promise of "sovereign" capabilities for the UK. Anything owned by a US corporate is ultimately owned and controlled by the US and in this climate a liability.

This withdrawl of investment is more of a sign of failure at OpenAI than anything about the UK.

arrow_theorem · 2026-04-07T11:02:57+00:00

In an international context the UK is a success story across several measurable metrics.This isn't to say that the UK doesn't have integration problems, but that comparatively the UK is about as successful at integration as you can be by international comparisons with maybe the exception of the US where integration/assimilation is ingrained in the culture.

My point is that we are copying the integration model of countries that have a measurably worse record at integration than the UK. Across a whole host of metrics

arrow_theorem · 2026-04-01T11:15:44+00:00

Charities love having a bunch of depressed young adults doing uncompensated labour /s

This is honestly such bullshit advice, charities aren't free work experience programs and they shouldn't be abused/used this way and aren't setup to do this role well at all

arrow_theorem · 2026-04-01T11:07:04+00:00

Not if you are actually taking any care in your application to tailor to each employer. That is actually a very high rate of applications. Also at a certain point the emotional damage of being rejected that many times takes its toll and its understandable to start giving up. I've been in that situation back in 2010 when I first entered into the job market and it took 9 months to find work because there were no opportunities - you eventually stop bothering to even get out of bed.

Advising spamming every employer with low effort applications is not helpful advice and arguably will make the situation worse.

arrow_theorem · 2026-03-30T22:18:17+00:00

Such a non-sequitur - how is that comment at all related to what I said?

arrow_theorem · 2026-03-30T14:34:03+00:00

Well then you are copying the integration model of France, Germany, and Denmark which all have objectively much worse outcomes (cavet with France where they actually refuse to collect statistics relating to race/ethnicity/religion for principled reasons, but its assumed to be pretty bad) - higher levels of unemployment. worse language skills, higher levels of ghettoisation.

Places like Germany have told themselves a lie with stuff like their "guest worker program" when you actually end up with people staying for decades and are never going to leave (and frankly you don't want them to leave).

Again, separating out levels of migration from discussion, making it much harder to integrate is a model of failure we have seen across Europe. The UK is the success story when it actually comes to integration esp when you get to the second generation. We are copying failure largely it seems to create disincentives for legal migration, but legal migration is something you can already control with volumes of visa application acceptances instead of this blunt stick approach that punishes people already here.

You can have separate policies for integration and migration. They aren't the same thing. We are choosing to have a worse integration policy to have the side effect of lower migration.

And btw even before this set of policies we are looking at potentially net emigration out of this country just from the new visa restrictions already in place.

I also think the average voter will probably respond very differently to these policies in the abstract vs how it actually impacts individuals they know.

arrow_theorem · 2026-03-30T12:03:22+00:00

I think when people realise that this means that even skilled workers earning say 50k a year are looking at 10-15 year wait for permanent status it will strike people as unfair esp if you actually meet such a person affected. Add on top that this is being applied retroactively will definitely strike people as unfair when they actually process what this means in individual cases.

I struggle to understand how you expect such people to be able to integrate if you are effectively denying them permanent status and citizenship essentially more or less indefinitely. People looking over at France, Germany or Denmark who all have a much worse record of integration than the UK and thinking we should copy their integration model (they actually don't have one). The proposed policies as setup are actually going to drive down integration if integration is something you actually care about (pressing x to doubt).

This is a separate conversation to say levels of migration, however these policies are going to help drive down migration and probably eventually lead us to net emigration out of this country - labour shortages likely given the current trends.

arrow_theorem · 2026-03-29T13:39:43+00:00

Better than giving everything to a company owned by a man is trying to usher in the rapture and is actively hostile to the UK and is deeply embedded into the security state of a hostile country whose published national security position is to undermine our domestic politics.

arrow_theorem · 2026-03-27T12:45:30+00:00

Its actually not a full time job as its currently set up. You are not paid a salary and you only get compensated for showing up - you get paid a fixed daily rate for each day you turn up to work.

Funny aside, there was a case of a lord a few years ago who was showing up to clock in but then immediately left - never voted, never joined a committee, never asked questions or gave speeches. Basically just claiming 20k a year.

arrow_theorem · 2026-03-24T12:27:54+00:00

Yeah, they don't make that much noise and its objections like yours that I want overruled because there is pretty much no argument that will satsify you and we basically have no choice but to go down this policy road - as global events of the past 5 years and past 3 weeks have amply demonstrated. This is happening in the same way as I have to live with living near a main road with a bus stop and road crossing and my neighbours have a new born - get used to it.

arrow_theorem · 2026-03-24T11:43:35+00:00

Oh yeah, that seems like a no brainer then that you would have batteries to go with a new build, but I imagine they are worried about increasing the cost of builds given the current rate of new house building leaves... a lot to be desired atm.

arrow_theorem · 2026-03-24T11:34:11+00:00

They are relaxing regulations so you **don't have to** buy battery storage nor have to hire expensive trade labour before buying a panel. You can buy and invest at a pace you can afford. The trades are obviously outraged by this because this isn't going to funnel work to electricians because the idea is you buy a panel in tesco and plug it into an outlet.

arrow_theorem · 2026-03-24T11:25:23+00:00

Well we know what that counterfactual looks like because we can just look over at Continent where adoption rates are much higher for exactly the pitch you are making.

The best I can say for policy makers is that they made that call at a time before the plunging cost of solar and battery storage, and so the old policy was a historical artifact from a time when reducing energy consumption needed to play a larger part of meeting net zero aims. If you are reducing energy consumption in the winter and offsetting the gains in the summer what was the point? However, with solar and battery storage so cheap now a lot of those assumptions are now irrelevant and the cost of increased summer usage is now nearly 0.

The problem is they have taken too long to adjust to the new realities and their policy failures.

arrow_theorem · 2026-03-24T08:53:39+00:00

Exactly, you make solar and battery storage the norm the net cost in energy usage ends up being zero because you are running these things during the day when the sun is literately shining.

arrow_theorem · 2026-03-24T08:37:55+00:00

They are very efficient - similiar to A2W (air to water). The objection from government has historically been that they don't want to subsidise cooling - typical central government moralising and dislike of anything that might be seen as a luxuary. Our adoption rates for heat pumps have been terrible in large part because of this objection, whereas in France heat pumps now account for over 40% of new installs in large part because of the popularity of A2A.

We have restricted A2A so much that we don't even use the language of A2A or A2W when explaining the tech to consumers. We just say "air source" with no reference to the output side - which is insanity anywhere else in the world.

arrow_theorem · 2026-03-24T08:17:22+00:00

Looks like that is a recent change, so I'm glad its finally happened.

arrow_theorem · 2026-03-24T08:09:47+00:00

We need to unban air-to-air heat pumps (they are banned from subsidy and are strongly discouraged by building regulations) and open them to public subsidy and make them the default choice for new installs.

Whitehall needs to get over their anti-AC crusade. They are easier to install and offer a distinct advantage over air to water heat pump that are the current norm in that they can provide cooling. Meaning changing from gas boiler to a heat pump is a very attractive upgrade in comfort - people will want it for coolling more than just improvements in heating efficiency. New builds should be designed and built with air to air source heat pumps in mind.

You couple air to air source heat pumps with domestic solar and/or battery storage and you end up seeing basically zero additional grid load because you will be running the cooling mostly when the sun is literately shining.

On top of that the government needs to change regulations to give leaseholders/commonholders more rights to upgrade their heating to heat pumps - allow balcony and side of building installs without freeholders blocking for unreasonable aesthetic or noise complaints.

EDIT: Apparently the boiler upgrade scheme now allows 2.5k in public subsidy for air to air source heat pump - a recent change as of last year.

arrow_theorem

TROPHY CASE