>>472292
Thanks for this. I'll discuss the Google cyber security certificate with him at some point today. It looks like Coursera is free for the first seven days and then it could be £47 per month for the subscription but if he gets some form of qualification out of it then it's a start.

We aren't ruling out other professions but there aren't many other opportunities for those either. We did apply for a local CAD apprenticeship last month but never heard back.

Thanks for the links on anxiety as well, I'll look into those later.

>>472289
Datacentres love hiring young people to do the incredibly basic work of running cables and making sure everything is still switched on. He'll love it for a bit, then realise it's all a load of bollocks and decide he wants to do a different job. Any qualifications he somehow obtains will be networking ones, such as the Cisco CCNA, and then he can get a better job where knowledge is actually appreciated. Why yes, I am the poster who keeps posting about losing my job recently, and yes, I did work in a datacentre.

How many internet devices do you use across your home?

I'd like to sit at the sofa 'watching TV' from time to time as a variable activity - a tablet seems a good option, especially as I could take it into the kitchen for cooking youtube videos.
A small media center would be nice, too.

>>472337

My main PC battlestation in the office, my previous build is now the "home theatre PC" hooked up to the TV in the living room, and old laptop with a broken screen hooked up to the TV in the bedroom, then I have an ancient netbook in the kitchen for recipes/youtube while washing up, and of course, my phone to scroll on when I'm having a shit.

So that's five. One for each room. Because what the fuck would I do in a room that doesn't have any internet in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAl4HTC7p7k

It was a simpler time, a better time.

>>472339

Christ, where have the last 15 years gone? Never mind.

Katy Brand is writing Hollywood films now, which is nice for her.

I'm unsure where I updated you lot on with my saga with the landlord selling the place and now looking to raise the rent on a new tenancy agreement.

It's shit because my flat is great - lots of space, great location, own bathroom and only one housemate but it was already pushing unaffordable so even a modest rise in rent would be too much for what might be a shorter tenancy. I partly moved here just because my last flatmate was going nuts and I needed out in a rush. With my current housemate we've pushed back on the lettings agency that we at least don't want to see a raise in rent this year given there are problems with the flat and we'll have the hassle and uncertainty of a sale going on. We've had nothing back so far and honestly it's doubtful the landlord is going to change their mind on selling and resist raising the rent - completely irrelevant idea.

Anyway there's already been potential buyers over viewing my flat and from the looks of it these are people looking to live-in rather than rent. Which I guess makes sense as everyone is waiting for the new Renters' Rights Bill to go through Parliament so there's no new landlords around.

Still it all puts me in an odd place. The housing market in London moves too fast for me to have many options at the moment, not until late next month, unless I look into co-living spaces that are designed for people moving into London from overseas - basically a hotel crossed with student accommodation, and hopefully find someone to buddy-up.

>>472289
Otherlad has already suggested cyber but I might recommend more niche specialisms like starting with a foundation certificate in sustainability and environmental management. It's one of those careers only one sort of person pursues but there's growing demand for it.

>because his attendance was too low

You need to start watching that, it's the bigger problem for a man his age. A mate had it where he said it was depression and anxiety so he didn't go to university for 3 years, he only really got out of it when his sister's husband died and he decided he needed to help her look after the kids.

Nothing gets me drowsier than reading a book while I'm laid on the sofa in my living room. I wish this level of sleepiness could hit me when I was actually in bed.

>>472343
The last book I tried to read in bed was a Pratchet; I got about 5 pages before the tedium hit. In that time a whole river of dust poured over my pillow, couldn't sleep for breathing.

>>472344

A friend has been trying to push the Discworld books on me for years. Trouble is, I don't really read much at all, and having just briefly thumbed through one of the books he lent me, I knew it was going to make no difference to my general book aversion.

I really wanted to try to get into reading Hitchhiker's Guide a few years ago, after picking up the complete volume for a fiver, but I gave up after about 50 pages. And that was although it was a light, pleasant read in principle.

I might go to a concert on my own on Friday to see a small band I've listened to for years. Have either of you done it before?

My vision of it the evening is probably sipping a couple beers through the night and trying to resist buying a pack of fags to try and make friends in the smoking area but ultimately just chain smoking on my own for no reason.

>>472344
>>472346
I've found that the trick with reading is to build a habit and routine of it. Back when I was a student I didn't have a washing machine at my place and I don't think I ever did as much reading in my life as sat in that laundry room while the machine went - probably one of my favourite memories from university was a late night laundry run as sad as that sounds.

>>472347

>I've found that the trick with reading is to build a habit and routine of it

That's the thing, though. It has always felt more like a chore than a regular habit, and then I started feeling guilty for not keeping it up.

I'm normally well read on all kinds of things from current affairs to philosophy and tech news, so I'm not functionally illiterate like some people who don't read. But I just can't really commit myself to reading anything the length and size of a novel.

I blame at least part of it on the absolute shedloads of reading I had to do at uni. As long ago as that was, I think it still has an effect on my unwillingness to read books today.

I've found there is a value all of its own in making a habit out of something you don't necessarily enjoy for its own sake. Probably I built up that tolerance through learning guitar, because the fun part is jamming with other players and belting out covers and so on, the hard work of getting up to the ability level to play things is really, really fucking boring tedious repetition. So over time I've sort of applied the same principle to other things.

Reading isn't one of them, sadly, because reading is, like videogames or watching movies, an inherently unproductive task. A waste of time. Not to say that's a bad thing, and of course you can talk about all the benefits, but ultimately it is just the same as any other form of entertainment, a method of whiling away the finite and irretrievable hours until your inevitable death. For me, I can only apply that motivation to things that are doing something. Things that give me a tangible end result.

It's a good job I read a lot when I was a kid, and I read a lot of books that were really above a kid's reading level. That gave me a good foundation. But when you are a kid you have all the time in the world, and as an adult I've just never been able to let go of all the other things I could be doing. Like navel gazing about it on an imageboard.

>>472348
>That's the thing, though. It has always felt more like a chore than a regular habit, and then I started feeling guilty for not keeping it up.
That's why you shake up your reading habit from time to time, trying new genres or topics.
I read about 8 Philip Dick books back to back, about 5 nights a week. Hadn't touched a book for a while before Guards! Guards! made me ill.

A backlit ebook reader can help for bed reading, particularly that you can use it in the dark and rely on a power timer when you litterally drop it while nodding off.
Somehow reading of the big computer doesn't count as 'reading', while an ebook reader does (but not with PDFs, not sure why).

Regarding reading, you absolutely need to keep it up as a routine. Every time I start a new book after not reading for a while, I am asleep in my living room by page 30. But if I'm in the habit of reading books regularly, it's a piece of piss.

>>472347
>I might go to a concert on my own on Friday to see a small band I've listened to for years. Have either of you done it before?
The one time I ever went to a concert, it was exactly this. I went to see militant pinko indie legends New Model Army in Southampton in 2008. The fact that I have never expressed any desire in any further live music experiences probably means I didn't enjoy it that much, but I had a decent enough time. You get to listen to the warm-up act, you get to try really hard to force yourself to like them (I even bought their CD), and when you see the band you came out for, you just go along with it and try to do what everyone else is doing without drawing too much attention to yourself. Buy a drink from the bar on your way in, buy a T-shirt on your way out, film your favourite song on your phone, and in my case, don't talk to anyone at any point. Nobody's going to think you're weird. The thing that stuck most with me was that one of their songs that I knew but didn't particularly care about, subsequently became one of my favourite songs of theirs after I saw it live.

Obviously, if you go to a lot of live music, your experience might be different from mine. Who are you going to see? Are they famous?

Regarding gigs- Just take some cocaine with you to get over the fear of talking to strangers. I always wondered why people enjoy that drug so much, until one day the penny dropped that's what it's for.

>>472352
I'm not sure the kind of person who's too shy to go to gigs alone is going to have a coke contact.

>>472353

Yeah but they can turn on their VPN and duckduckgo "how to order drugs on the dark web" can't they.

>>472354
I don't know I'm annoying enough to be able to talk to strangers about any old shit.

Also FED! FED! Fucking narc!

Should the UK government ban first-cousin marriage?

The British Society for Genetic drugs (BSGM) agrees that citing health as a reason to ban first-cousin marriage is not justified. It warns that, according to research, focusing on cousin marriage in this way stigmatises certain communities, undermines trust in medical services and causes couples to disengage from clinical support. Responding to the proposed ban, the BSGM argues that the risks can be reduced through existing measures such as premarital genomic testing – which can identify carriers of certain recessive genetic conditions and is already offered in some countries (and, in certain regions with high rates of first-cousin marriage, is even mandatory) – as well as offering targeted health education and genetic counselling.

Research into first-cousin marriage describes various potential benefits, including stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages (resources, property and inheritance can be consolidated rather than diluted across households). In addition, though first-cousin marriage is linked to an increased likelihood of a child having a genetic condition or a congenital anomaly, there are many other factors that also increase this chance (such as parental age, smoking, alcohol use and assisted reproductive technologies), none of which are banned in the UK. Genetic counselling, awareness-raising initiatives and public health campaigns are all important tools to help families make informed decisions without stigmatising certain communities and cultural traditions. In order to balance respect for cultural practices with evidence-based healthcare, Professor Oddie stresses a focus on what he calls ‘genetic literacy’ – that is, education and voluntary screening – rather than simply banning the practice of first-cousin marriage.

https://www.genomicseducation.hee.nhs.uk/blog/should-the-uk-government-ban-first-cousin-marriage/

It turns out that NHS England aren't in favour of banning marrying your cousin. Hmmm.

>>472403

>It turns out that NHS England aren't in favour of banning marrying your cousin.

How often does that really happen, though. Besides in rural Mississippi and among nobility.

>>472404

All the time among the Laplanderstani population.

>A 2008 analysis of infant mortality in Birmingham showed that South Asian infants had twice the normal infant mortality rate and three times the usual rate of infant mortality due to congenital anomalies.[152][19]

>A 2021 study found about 55% of British laplanderstanis were married to their first cousin.[158]

>In 2023, the Born in Bradford study found that in three inner-city Bradford wards, 46% of mothers from the laplanderstani community were married to a first or second cousin.[159]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage#Prevalence

So, it's easy to see the angle where it's another blind eye to something we'd normally not accept, turned to the ethnic demographic because we don't want to be racist, and how well that kind of thing works as a wedge issue.

>>472404

One in six babies in Bradford are born to first cousins. Coincidentally, Bradford has the highest rate of congenital disability in the UK.

That statistic actually downplays the problem. The majority of the British laplanderstani community are from Mirpur, a remote region of Kashmir. They've had a high rate of cousin marriage for generations, which concentrates genetic problems over time. You could randomly pick any two laplanderstanis from anywhere in the UK and they are more likely than not to be related.

The data is absolutely undeniable, but a lot of organisations are just talking around it. There's a perfectly fair argument that banning cousin marriage could drive the issue underground and make mothers less likely to engage with healthcare and social services, but the debate is totally dominated by the usual British habit of denying and downplaying any issue relating to migration. We can pretend that the British laplanderstani community isn't horrendously inbred out of awkwardness or political correctness or a fear of giving ammunition to the far right, but it won't make all those severely disabled children go away.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c241pn09qqjo

>>472403
It's absurd that they're looking to describe the benefits of keeping it in the family for community but they're right about it not being an issue on its own but the idea of banning cousin marriage falls apart quite quickly if you look at it for even a second.

1. Marriage and children aren't perfectly connected in 2025 and it's already awkward enough to police incest between direct relatives (who are consenting adults). We don't have a society (at the national level at least) that works on the terms banning cousin-marriage assumes.
2. There's no 'cousin-gene', it's about having a kid with someone whose genetic code has the same issues that your own does. As a report makes clear it's not a smoking gun and we don't criminalise other risk factors for genetic diseases in children, or even people who carry genetic disorders from having children or impose TFMR.
3. We have another small, homogeneous population that has long suffered these challenges Wiltshire Iceland, it's model points to using a database (and now app) cataloguing risk factors with the locals generally having kids with their third and fourth cousins. The point is to create social norms to do this that doesn't get autistic about it.

I'd be in favour of genetic screening between partners being on the NHS. And you both get to read each others internet history before marriage.

>>472406

>We can pretend that the British laplanderstani community isn't horrendously inbred out of awkwardness or political correctness or a fear of giving ammunition to the far right, but it won't make all those severely disabled children go away.


The Right could indeed spin this as, not only do we have all them foreigners, but they are a drain on the NHS because of inbreeding.

I don't remember Reform or others taking up the issue, but if they did, I'm sure they could win votes that way.

Before you go to bed, help me with my DIY again:

I rather foolishly did that thing where you pour some cooking liquid, that turned out to be mostly fat, down the sink. So I blocked the sink. I have tried all sorts of deadly chemicals, but water still won't go down. I do not own a plunger, and was not able to buy one today, although I did buy a little brush on a wire.

To continue my track record of exceptional genius, I unscrewed all the pipes under the sink and cleaned them. None of them are blocked! The only remaining possibility that I can imagine is that the blockage is outside the house, further along the pipe. Or, there is another problem that happened simultaneously in the most insane coincidence in the world.

I'm also struggling to reattach one of the pipes. Have either of you ever done this level of DIY plumbing? Do you know what I'm talking about? Perhaps we can discuss it amiably, and hopefully I can learn some exciting facts that will help me restore my kitchen sink to a usable state.

>>472409
What happens when you run the tap in the bathroom or the shower?

>>472410
I blocked the sink yesterday, and had a shower today and it drained just fine. But I think my kitchen sink might go to one of those pipes outside the house that just goes into a drain, separate from the rest.

Oh, and the reason I was struggling to reattach one of the pipes was because I thought the screwy bit was part of the white pipe, but YouTube told me that I need to slide the screwy bit onto the pipe with no thread, slide the white pipe over it, then screw it tight with the screwy ring. I should have it all back together soon!

The problem is definitely in the pipe outside my house. I can't make either of my drain snakes dig through it, so there might be some mesh or something (or maybe I am just unable to make the snake go round a corner) but when I tried pouring boiling water straight into that pipe, to make sure there were no air issues, bits of fat came out too, so I think I'm getting close. Hundreds of bottles of drain cleaner might eventually solve the problem. Plus I can have another go at buying a plunger tomorrow, although the blockage will be a good couple of metres into the pipe.

For anyone who read all my posts about my blocked sink, I finally managed to fix it today. The pipe outside, that goes into the drain (apparently called a "gully", but the pipe is just a pipe) very conveniently came off in my hand when I tugged on it. Holding it in my hand, and using one of the drain snakes I had bought myself, I was able to push the blockage out. It was about an inch of solid fat, so obviously it was slightly disgusting, but it was very easy to do once I had the blocked pipe in my hand. The cylindrical fat slab (I will call it the manky candle, like Yankee Candle, geddit?) was right at the very bottom of the pipe, which makes me think it had been trying to slide out for a while, but the pipe goes straight over a grate which was holding it in.

Everything is now flowing perfectly, unless the pipes under the sink are still dripping due to my amateurish reassembly.

>>472418

>For anyone who read all my posts about my blocked sink, I finally managed to fix it today.

A sub sandwich and chocolate covered marzipan don't go well together in short succession, it turns out. It looks like it's starting to give me the shits.

Decided to try and a smoked cheese and Marmite toastie for breakfast. It tastes a bit like biting into an ashtray.

Looks a bit windy out.

I bought five plain white T shirts off Amazon for a tenner and they came in the post today. They're Fruit of the Loom branded, and they're honestly a bit low quality. They're not how I remember the brand from my childhood. I guess you get what you pay for.

>>472486
I think some details about clothing have just always been lies. People always talk like "100% cotton" is the best thing a T-shirt can be, and yet if you sweat into a cotton T-shirt, it'll be soaking wet and sodden, while polyester just dries almost instantly. I do sweat a lot, like medically so, it's awful, but cotton is overrated. And "Wow, it's 100% cotton!" is a marketing spin that goes hand-in-hand with, "Wow, it's made by Fruit of the Loom!" Never trust either of them.

It could also be another Blaupunkt situation. Blaupunkt, they of the top-quality stereos and car radios, went out of business years ago and now they just license the name out to any Chinese factory that's willing to pay. So if you have a Blaupunkt toaster, or blender, or kettle, and it cost you £20, it's not the famous Blaupunkt and it probably wasn't a fantastic deal. There's no German engineering involved; they might as well have one of those made-up Chinese names like Bauiiie or Pfnorzeiu or Gbaghnop.

>>472486
There's nothing special about Fruit of the Loom t-shirts. Especially not ones you get for a tenner from Amazon. Without wanting to be a dick, part of the reason they're not very good anymore is because people are increasingly unwilling to spend more than a tenner on a t-shirt.

I do buy clothes online, but rarely t-shirts. This is because I've found the fit of t-shirts to be subject to massive variations. This usually means being very long and ending below my bollocks, which isn't really right.

>>472487
Be careful, brother. Encasing oneself in petroleum by-products is a surefire way to wind up with genitals that look like the inside of a seabird!

>>472488

I bought these off Amazon because my big Tesco here now wants over £12 for a two pack of entirely generic white Ts. Which seemed a bit much.

>>472489
I didn't even clock that you bought five for that much. Sanch already summed up my opinion on the matter.

Uninstalled everything I don't actively use, including Steam, and it only freed up 20GB. I give in, I need a new external. If I transfer all my documents from the system drive then there'll be nearly 40 free on there, and my external HD is overdue a replacement, I'm surprised it hasn't died on me already.

I've told you lads before and I'll tell you again, you can get Hollister t-shirts for about a fiver each when they're on sale and they're (probably) the best ones you'll get for a low price.

Lidl had absolutely cracking sweet chestnuts today for 59p per 100 gr. Quite large and very firm. They're in my oven now.

>>472495
Oh, honey, that's where food goes, not woodland detritus.

>>472496

Fun fact - sweet chestnuts were a staple food of the poor for centuries until about late Victorian to Edwardian times, because the trees were growing in abundance across many cities. And because they were the food of the poor, many members of classes above the poverty line were afraid to be seen picking them up and collecting them. It was only relatively recently that they became seen as a seasonal delicacy for everybody.

I'm stumped by this quarter's National Trust magazine crossword competition.

The clue is "featured on BBC's Antiques Roadshow" and I have the letters D, T, A, E, R, G, R, E, but fucked if I can rearrange that to fit.

>>472505
Is there a Great Red something? It's probably going to be some stately home or something where an episode was filmed.

>>472506
Gartered?

My personal rules, which admittedly I have broken in the past, are to put on a jumper for the first time when I go away for my birthday (I go away on the 11th this year) and put my heating on in November. After the hottest summer on record, I thought it would be easy, but no, I have just donned my jumper a week early. Winter is here. The SAD seasons are upon us. Fun’s over till April. Most interestingly of all, putting a jumper on hasn’t actually warmed me up at all.

>>472505
I’ve got it! TREDEGAR.

If you got this five minutes after you asked and never told us, I will be very upset.

>>472509
You magnificent bastard.