Ben Reade

@BernoulliDefect @quasistable Yeah it is

@quasistable There are very good engineering, political, and economic reasons to not dump nuclear waste in the ocean. Bringing the practice back is not the key to cheap nuclear!

Related: Britain is second only to the Soviet Union in the amount of radioactive waste it dumped in the ocean. The industry deserved a public reckoning.

@akarlin Learning another language was a huge disappointment for me. Learnt some French. Went to France. They spoke English. Needs to have few English speakers to be worthwhile and need to travel there and need to use it 3 times. Gaelic would ne my next choice

Map of FSI's language difficulty levels. When considering whether learn a language, it's best to not just consider its use case but to also divide that by how much time you would expect to spend on it.

@StefanFSchubert Every student should spend 1/10th of the money they will spend studying, researching or consulting others to predict how well they will do in a given career path. The old maxims just dont work anymore

In the UK, a business degree has lower returns than nursing degree after five years

@NefX_Guru8 @alvinfoo Womens fertility is a window. By 32 to 36 it closes and you wont be able to have children. Feminism does not teach thag

@alvinfoo Telling a girl not to get her PhD at 29 is some hatin ass shit. She'll have plenty of time to get a boyfriend after she graduates.

PHD is good but please don’t waste time… - Lee Kuan Yew 😂

@NickyZog @theiaincameron As someone from Mull, this sounds like something they tell the otter botherers on wildlife tours. You can climb to the top of Mulls highest peak and see a huge amount of the coastline. With all the nooks and crannies the length of a coastline is infinite. Ever heard that?

@theiaincameron Not sure if true, but I often heard Argyll's coast alone is longer than the whole coastline of France and Mull's coast stretched out would reach London.

Scotland is tiny in world terms. It fits comfortably into a corner of Texas. However, at over 18,000km, Scotland's coastline could traverse the USA's landmass more than four times, with plenty of room to spare.

@BYoshua66901 @nikiscevak As someone who is chasing a company for 3000 GBP, that sounds amazing

This country loves bureaucracy 🤦🏻‍♂️ The number of people who come out of the woodwork just to put you in your place is nobody’s business. One little disagreement with a customer and the next day you get an email from an ombudsman demanding an explanation. One day small and medium businesses will need a dedicated staff member just to answer back to those bureaucrats. It is so overly regulated.

Australia has 5x the number of public servants per capita than China 🙈

@TonyB_1997 @tomhfh The cladding was sold as being non-flammable. It was some weed addicited man who faked the regulation test results.

@tomhfh Concrete buildings are inherently safe from the spread of fire. Until some fuckwit came up with the idea of nailing flammable cladding to the outside. Undo that fuckwittery and we can move on. Nothing more complicated is needed.

At some point we should reappraise whether the response to the Grenfell tragedy (circled) should have been to make it impossible for thousands to sell their homes, impose tens of billions of costs on our economy, and practically end the construction of new tall buildings.

@RorateCaeli There are Laughing Buddha statues repacing the gargoyles on the outside too. Needs someone with gokd aim to shoot them off.

Some of the Viollet-le-Duc stained glass windows in Notre-Dame de Paris (miraculously untouched by the fire) are to be replaced this week by some modern "diversity" nonsense pushed by Emmanuel Macron. The artist responsible for it, Claire Tabouret, made so many silly mistakes (since she is not a stained glass designer) -- look at the heads for instance...

@TuskerPlanning @jaychuksy The story is real but the scenes shown are fake. Not everything is recorded for the internet

@jaychuksy Who would still wear a hardhat if this happened and, not call an ambulance and go to this place instead? Fake

Who else knew that mayonnaise could be used to remove asphalt residue

@OrinocoBlow @markbishopuk @dibden_jake Lmao you fucking leftie. Its not a good thing if your political classes rely on surpressing opposing views. It just means when the culture war starts irl the anger agaisnt you people for what has been done will be greater. Im openly right wing when with close friends and family.

@BenReade8 @markbishopuk @dibden_jake Good!

Your friendly reminder (that despite the image portrayed online) Nick, 30 ans, still votes for Labour because he is a young urban graduate, and is more likely to vote for the Greens than to vote for Reform.

@OrinocoBlow @markbishopuk @dibden_jake Have you even been out recently? Revealing you plan to vote right wing is literally social suicide. You have to constantly pretend to be left, memorise the lines, learn the symbols, or you will be cancelled.

@markbishopuk @dibden_jake Lmao that’s such a self tell. Sorry you can’t get pussy, chief!

@TrishMacf @trwsenti A bad flat share is torture. Work is hard enough then you come home and get told you are being evicted in two weeks because you left the heater on.

@trwsenti Flat share, house share, rent a room in a house- it’s what used to happen when grads left and found work on minimal wages - you progress and work towards the things you want.

£32,000 a year. Graduate job. What it actually comes to: Gross: £2,667 a month. Income tax: £324 National insurance: £225 Student loan Plan 2: £35 Pension (4% auto-enrol): £107 Take home: £1,976. Rent in any UK city worth living in: £1,200. Council tax, gas, electric, water, internet: £420. Train or petrol to get to work: £250. Bills alone eat £1,870 of it. Leaves you £106 a month for food, clothes, socialising and any kind of life. This is what a 'good graduate job' looks like in 2026 after 3 years at uni and £50K of student debt. How did we let them sell this to us?

@hgreen81 @85JJB @icenianV7 @WillKingston You have never seen someone destroy a business.

@85JJB @icenianV7 @WillKingston You just made that up.

This is the level of stupidity we are dealing with.

@Winterborn71 @SandyofCthulhu Wow, AI is more level headed than I am.

I'd gently disgree @BenReade8 "you are a target" Yes. "You are a target" is the comment that comes to mind, along with the following: I'd gently disagree with most being African straight enslaved trafficed or Asian (tricked to go there and "we keep your passport for safety on this job, you work here. Forever") and probably rarely white. Am I right? Grok: Yes, you're right. The data on modern slavery (forced labor, debt bondage, human trafficking, forced marriage, etc.) shows that the overwhelming majority of victims are in Asia and Africa, primarily affecting local populations or regional migrants who are not white. White people (Europeans, North Americans, etc.) make up a tiny fraction globally and are not specifically or disproportionately "targeted" because of their race in the way Ben Reade suggests. Quick facts on the numbers (latest reliable estimates) ~50 million people were in modern slavery on any given day in 2021 (the most recent Global Estimates from ILO, Walk Free, and IOM). The 40 million figure Ben mentioned is from older 2018 data. This is not chattel slavery like the transatlantic trade, but mostly forced labor, debt bondage, and trafficking. Where it happens (by region and country) Asia & the Pacific dominates both in raw numbers and prevalence in many places:India: ~11 million China: ~5.8 million Pakistan: ~2.3 million Plus Indonesia, Bangladesh, North Korea (~2.6–2.7 million), etc. Common forms: Debt bondage in brick kilns, factories, agriculture; migrant workers tricked with fake jobs, passports confiscated, and forced to stay (exactly the "we keep your passport for safety" scenario you mentioned, especially in Gulf states under the kafala system). Africa: High prevalence in countries like Eritrea, Mauritania (descent-based slavery affecting Haratin people), parts of the Sahel and conflict zones (raids, forced recruitment into armed groups, child labor in mines). Nigeria, DR Congo also high in absolute numbers. Arab States & elsewhere: Often exploits South Asian/African migrant workers. Top 10 countries by prevalence (2023 Global Slavery Index): North Korea, Eritrea, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Tajikistan, UAE, Russia, Afghanistan, Kuwait. Almost all are in Asia, Africa, or the Middle East. These populations are overwhelmingly non-white (South Asian, East Asian, Black African, Arab, etc.). Global breakdowns by race/ethnicity aren't always published, but the country-level data makes it clear: the vast majority of victims live in (and come from) the Global South. What about white people / Westerners? In Europe & Central Asia, there is some modern slavery (~a few million), but it's still a small slice compared to Asia/Africa, and victims are often Eastern European migrants or locals in high-prevalence spots like Russia or Central Asia—not Western whites being raided while traveling. In the US (which has ~1.1 million estimated), sex trafficking victims are disproportionately Black (around 40% in some studies, despite being ~13–14% of the population), Native American, and Hispanic. White victims exist but are underrepresented relative to their share of the population. Labor trafficking often hits Hispanic/Asian migrants. Travel/tourism angle: White Westerners are not a primary target for enslavement. Kidnapping for ransom or scams can happen in hotspots (e.g., parts of Africa, Middle East, Latin America), sometimes tied to perceived wealth, but that's not the same as the systemic forced labor/trafficking that defines the 50 million. "You are a target if you are white" is a dramatic overstatement with no backing in the Global Slavery Index or ILO data. The risk for a random white tourist is orders of magnitude lower than for local poor people or regional migrants. ChatGPT's "85% of the world's population is unsafe to visit" claim sounds like a hallucination or wildly misinterpreted travel advisories—official ones (e.g., US State Dept.) rate only a small handful of countries as "Do Not Travel," and even high-prevalence slavery countries often have safe tourist zones. It's not 85%. Your description matches the evidence: most cases involve African victims in conflict/descent-based systems or Asian (and other migrant) workers tricked into bonded labor. Whites aren't "rarely" affected in a statistical sense—they're statistically negligible in the global picture. The thread context (historical Arab slave trade vs. transatlantic) is interesting, but Ben's jump to "you could easily be targeted... if you are white" doesn't hold up against current data. Modern slavery is real and horrific, but it's driven by poverty, conflict, weak governance, and migration—not racial targeting of whites.

One of my best friends (sadly now passed away) was a PhD in Arabic history. He spoke Arabic fluently (with an Egyptian accent, though he was 100% American) and helped translate many Arabic medieval manuscripts into English. Now, let's be clear that I am not defending ANY slave traders. However in Africa during the main slaving activities. some of the slaves were taken by Europeans by ship to the New World, and some of them were taken by Arabs (via inland routes). About 90% of the trans-atlantic slaves made it to the New World alive. Approximately 90% of the slaves taken to North Africa and Arabia died en route. This is the main reason why despite the huge amounts of slave taken by Arabs and bedouins, there is almost no trace of black Africa blood in the modern Middle East, while they thrive in the Americas. (Yes, some blacks in Arabia were turned into eunuchs, but this was a minority. Mostly they're ''missing" because they died on the march.) The map below is from the UN, which is not a particularly right-wing organization.

@dilangilluly @Hitchslap1 Its useful to know in competition for something that you are either much higher or lower in IQ than the people you are competing with eg for a job, or to outsmart.

@Hitchslap1 I actually don't know what mine is except for one test I was administered in 11th grade. I know what I'm capable of and I don't need a number to confirm or challenge that.

That’s new. How can knowing your IQ be actively harmful?

@Winterborn71 @SandyofCthulhu In fact, I asked ChatGPT was percent of the worlds population is unsafe to visit and it said 85%. There are 40 million slaves in the world. You could easily be targeted. You are a target if you are white.

Same reason most of the northern Mediterranean is fortified is from islamic slavers. They ranged out to Ireland, Britain, Iceland etc. 1-1.25 million taken. Didn't stop until 1830's. Be very careful if your not US or European going to the Middle east for any reason. You may not come back.

@Winterborn71 @SandyofCthulhu Genuinely this. Slavery is still rife in many parts of the world. You, a solo traveler, could easily be kidnapped and held a slave in 40% of the world.

@mudscryer Motherfucker!

@tacomawerewolf @cremieuxrecueil That seems mean on schizophrenics. You should look up who your talking about on YouTube. Most are white. Most are above average intelligence. Most can be cured.

@cremieuxrecueil A harsh winter would provide strong selective pressure against severe mental disorder in a pre-welfare state society You can survive being a homeless schizophrenic in Los Angeles, your chances are a lot worse in Anchorage

Nature finally published it! The Reich Lab article on genetic selection in Europe over the last 10,000 years is finally online, and it includes such interesting results as: - Intelligence has increased - People got lighter - Mental disorders became less common And more!

@TomJBelfort @mudscryer You don't think it is possible? 143IQ is 1 in 500 people. That's two on the average persons Facebook friends list. Thats 2 people per average tweet. SD is a specific field of maths, that while useful, is ome which someone who studied biology could have easily never come across.