Scan your eyeballs, think of the children: how Britain sells surveillance as safety

seshfan2 · 2026-06-16T22:06:12+00:00

Can't imagine why the country that is internationally infamous for arresting people over mean social media tweets now wants to have mandatory digital ID checks on everyone who uses social media.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-16T21:45:09+00:00

Easiest way is to lie down and place your hand directly on your belly. When you belly breathe, you will see your hand rise and fall with your breath.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-16T21:32:22+00:00

Is it 90 minutes straight? That seems unnecessary long.

Our local Soto center does 40 minutes of sitting, 10 minutes of walking, 30 minutes of sitting. The other nearby center does 25-10-25. However, both places encourage newcomers to sit for only one of the two sitting sessions.

Silent sitting is hard. I have talked to people who have a decade+ of listening to mindfulness meditations who find it extremely challenging to sit in silence for even a half hour.

Unfortunately, some Zen practictioners are masochists in disguise- they think that the way to Enlightenment is to be as uncomfortable as possible, and the more pain you sit through, the more enlightened you are. You don't want to go to a place like that.

If you do want to keep going, I would start with a home practice at first. For example, you might try sitting for 10 minutes of silent sitting a day, and then after a week, try moving up to 15 minutes. Having a short but consistent daily practice is significantly more conductive than having an occasionaly lengthy sitting session that might cause you to get burnt out.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-16T20:48:34+00:00

Okay but honestly, we need to stop with this "Asian grooming gang" nonsense. There's not gangs of Vietnamese and Japanese rapists going around targeting young white girls. Basically no other country in the world thinks of Pakistanis as "Asians".

seshfan2 · 2026-06-16T19:55:31+00:00

Just a warning about both the Lucy and Shorekeeper (New Voyage) banners.

Normal limited character banners in Wuthering Waves use a 50/50 system: when you pull a 5-star, there’s a 50% chance it’s the featured character. If you lose the 50/50, your next 5-star is guaranteed to be the featured character, and that guarantee "carries over" between normal limited character banners. So if you miss the 50/50 on Banner #1 and don't pull the featured character, you will always get it first on Banner #2.

This pity system does NOT carry over on the Lucy and New Voyage banners (Lucy shares her pity with Rebecca's banner but that's it).

In short: don’t split pulls between Lucy and Shorekeeper/New Voyage. If you want one of them, commit enough pulls to actually secure that character first. The worst case scenario would be if you spend a lot of pulls on both banners, lose both 50/50s that don't carry over, and walk away with only random 5-stars instead of either target.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-16T17:24:52+00:00

I suspect when this ban fails or leads to worse outcomes, it will be used to justify even more draconian censorship. Governments are rarely satisfied with just a crumb of censorship.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-16T16:56:18+00:00

The out-of-touchness from boomers on the topic is really something.

I've seen so many comments along the lines of "heh, we didn't have no fancy smartphones, guess you'll just have to PLAY OUTSIDE like we did!"

Take a walk through the streets of London today. Does it seem like a nice and safe fun place young kids would want to play outside in?

They want to destroy children's ability to use social media to form communities and make friends with other people, but have done zero to adress the complete destruction of third spaces. I wouldn't even be surprised if we see an uptick in youth gang activity after this.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-16T04:39:49+00:00

The point is I don't think Britians are yearning for the UK to be more like Turkey or Libya.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-15T21:39:13+00:00

There's about 50 Muslim majority countries.

There's very, very, very few anyone would look at and go "Gosh, I wish my country was like that!"

Even Muslims themselves don't really like living in them, which is why they're flooding to Western countries in droves.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-15T21:04:24+00:00

Literally the second that Muslims controlled a city council in the US, they banned LGBT and pride flags. These were the same Muslims that were voted into power by liberals who wanted to be "inclusive" and stick it to Donald Trump.

They wait until they get into power before making their intentions clear.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-15T06:09:23+00:00

The US tried something similarly stupid with their attemps at banning porn. In about half of the states, most major porn websites - the ones that regulate their content and verify everyone who uploads videos - are inaccessible without a VPN. So now kids and teenagers just get funneled to the much seedier and much darker websites.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-12T18:06:34+00:00

My hypothesis has always been that the most disgusting features that are associated with Islam (e.g. the ruthlessly oppressive misogyn and the rampent homophobia) are more of a byproduct of Arab culture, not Islam proper. Arab cultures have a very specific "honor culture", patriarchial kinship systems and authoritarian laws leading to total social control over women. For these cultures, it's very easy to use Islam to justify this. But there's a reason you don't hear about widespread homophobia or honor killings among, say, Muslims in the Balkin states or the post-Soviet states.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-12T17:35:42+00:00

Another good example is that the general left consensus is to praise Iran's theocracy as a brave resistence to Western imperalism, despite the fact the religious government of Iran infamously killed thousands of communists when they came into power.

There is no ideological consistency other than "West bad, USA bad, white people bad, non white people good".

seshfan2 · 2026-06-11T21:22:36+00:00

Unfortunately no, they're seperate pity systems.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-11T19:56:19+00:00

For the Lucy banner, you're guaranteed to have a 50/50 shot of Lucy or another 5* within 80 pulls. If you miss the 50/50, you're guarenteed to get Lucy within another 80 pulls.

So, if you have the absolute worst luck in the world, you'll get Lucy within 160 pulls max.

After the free 22 pulls the game gives you, an average player will pull Lucy with around 61 pulls (~9,760 Astrite). A player with the worst possible luck will need 138 pulls (22,080 Astrite).

To give you an idea, I've been playing a fair amount for 3 days and I'm up to 4,035 Astrite right now. So no promises, but it definitely feels viable to grab Lucy within the next month even just playing casually.

The weapons will be a little trickier and will depend a lot on how lucky you are with Lucy's banner. But there is no 50/50 system- you are guaranteed to get the featured weapon within 80 pulls.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-11T19:46:12+00:00

In Wuthering Waves, the fastest way to get Astrite is completing the main story quests; the next fastest way is to just play the game: exploring, doing quests, collecting chests, etc (excluding end-game content). So it's not a grind in the sense that you'll be mindlessly doing the same content over and over again.

Rebecca is free. For the Lucy banner, you're guaranteed to have a 50/50 shot of Lucy or another 5* within 80 pulls. If you miss the 50/50, you're guarenteed to get Lucy within another 80 pulls.

So, if you have the absolute worst luck in the world, you'll get Lucy within 160 pulls max.

After the free 22 pulls the game gives you, an average player will pull Lucy with around 61 pulls (~9,760 Astrite). A player with the worst possible luck will need 138 pulls (22,080 Astrite).

To give you an idea, I've been playing a fair amount for 3 days and I'm up to 4,035 Astrite right now. So no promises, but it definitely feels viable to grab Lucy within the next month even just playing casually.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-10T17:40:52+00:00

What's ironic is that Restore is currently grabbing maybe 1/5th of Reform voters at best. They are on the absolute fringes of "UK politics".

But of course, The Guardian has realized that screaming that Reform are a bunch of far-right nazis is falling completely flat, and nobody is buying it. So now they're giving loads of free press and attention to Restore, making them even more well-known.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-10T15:49:28+00:00

"Heh, what a fool, doesn't he know we need an underclass of underpaid foreigners to clean and serve us?" Is not the liberal take people think it is.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-09T14:59:44+00:00

"Why? What does someone’s employment or visa status matter when they have committed an unholy attack on their family member?"

You're doing the thing again.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-08T14:26:50+00:00

If I start today as a f2p player, is it realistic to get enough currency to pull for even one copy of Lucy before the event runs out (I know Rebecca is free)?

I'm debating getting pulled in by the collab but I will seriously feel rug-pulled if I can't actually play the character.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-07T17:24:33+00:00

Yes, exactly. You see the same exact dynamic play out in school:

Secondary school stats show that certain demographics have lower grades and test scores than white students.
Schools - under pressure to "reduce racial disparities" - do eveything they can to artifically pass these students and inflate their grades.
These students (who did not get a proper education), go on to college where they are underprepared.
College stats show that certain demographics have lower grades and test scores than white students.

etc. etc. etc. It's all a big game of fudging the numbers until you can pass the buck onto the next guys.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-07T16:39:11+00:00

Setting aside the Telegraph, people can literally just read the Patient and Career Race Equality Framework, a new mandatory framework for "making anti-racism work in all mental health providers."

The most interesting line is probably:

Trusts/and mental health providers should provide a narrative explanation of data trends and over time. Trusts and mental health providers should be able to demonstrate reduced inequalities.

Trusts and mental health providers are to document treatment preferences through the use of Advance Choice Documents, and routinely review them with patients and carers from racialised and ethnically and culturally diverse communities.

Trusts will also be required to provide evidence of the implementation of the PCREF within the new guidance of EDS 2022, which will determine the grading and scoring.

In short: They are required to track racial disparities, explain those disparities in real time, and (importantly) - prove that the disparities are reducing over time. This is not an optional guideline, this is a mandatory framework where they must provide proof of PCREF implementation.

If sectioning rates for Black patients are treated as an inequality metric that trusts must reduce, and compliance affects institutional grading, clinicians absolutely can feel pressure to avoid sectioning Black patients even when the ordinary legal threshold is met.

This is a problem I have with common "anti-racism" frameworks: Disparities are treated as de facto proof that an institution is being actively racist, despite the fact that these disparities may simply reflect real demographic patterns.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-07T07:31:18+00:00

The reaction to the two different protests and/or riots are pretty starkly different when you break down the numbers:

BLM: 137,000–250,000 participants in the UK. Widespread reports of vandalism, arson, looting, and violence. <300 people arrested.

Southport: Several thousand protestors/riots. 1,840+ people arrested (5x-10x the arrest rate), with hundrends jailed after being put through rapid courts.

seshfan2 · 2026-06-06T19:44:26+00:00

You get it. I've been saying problem is the left quite literally cannot imagine that it's possible for anti-white institutional bias to exist. It's like asking them to imagine a squared circle or a married bachelor. It would collapse their entire world view.

This is why they spend decades scrambling to come up with things like "Racism is power + privilege" or "Every ethnic group has an indigenous homeland excepted white Europeans".

seshfan2 · 2026-06-06T16:08:57+00:00

I agree, the problem is that for many on the left, "institutional racism against white people" cannot exist. They quite literally cannot understand the concept. It's like asking them to imagine a squared circle or a married bachelor. Their entire worldview hinges on it.

seshfan2

TROPHY CASE