Andrew Wallace

It's as if I don't belong here Like an alien or spy Who's landed on a strange world With no grasp of how or why. Buy A.D.H.DAYS, Poems From This World & Beyond here: amzn.to/3PBOxt9 #poetrylovers #sciencefiction #adhd

Susana Trimarco disguised herself as madam and walked into brothels across northern Argentina, searching for her missing daughter among women trapped in sexual slavery and in the process, she sparked a movement that would free over 3,000 sex trafficking victims. It began in April 2002, when her 23-year-old daughter, María de los Ángeles Verón, left for a doctor's appointment in their city of San Miguel de Tucumán and never returned home. Frustrated by a police investigation she believed was deliberately sabotaged by corruption, Trimarco obtained the names of known pimps and sex traffickers from police files and launched her own search. She posed as a buyer interested in purchasing the captive women and girls - some as young as 14, who could be traded for about $800. One rape victim told her she had seen María drugged, with swollen eyes, in a trafficker's home that doubled as a holding place for newly abducted women. But by the time Trimarco could follow the lead, her daughter had been moved. Though María was never found, Trimarco's relentless pursuit transformed her into one of Argentina's most powerful human rights activists and forced sex trafficking onto national agenda. "The desperation of a mother blinds you," she says. "It makes you fearless." Through this dangerous work, Trimarco discovered the full scope of sex trafficking and corruption within the police and judiciary that kept women trapped in forced prostitution. "The police would hand [the trafficked women] back to the criminals," she recalls. "They used to say: 'Don't leave me. Take me with you.'" Trimarco ended up becoming the personal guardian to 129 survivors of sex trafficking, sheltering them in her home and helping them reunite with their families. Trimarco's relentless advocacy forced change at highest levels. Her work helped lead to first law, passed in 2008, making human trafficking a federal crime; the subsequent reforms have led to thousands of people being rescued from sex traffickers. These successes, however, have come with high personal cost to Trimarco: she has suffered many reprisals over the years including countless death threats, having her house set on fire, and several attempts to run her over in street. As more trafficking survivors and families of trafficking victims reached out to her for help, Trimarco says, "It came to a point where I just did not have capacity to help them all. That is when I decided to open a foundation." In 2007, she founded Fundación María de los Ángeles, a non-governmental organization focused on helping people escape from trafficking and lobbying for legislation to prevent it. Her efforts focused on her daughter's disappearance eventually resulted in trials for 13 people, including several police officers, in 2012; all 13 were acquitted, a ruling that prompted outrage by many and led to impeachment proceedings against three judges. In December 2013, Tucumán Supreme Court reversed acquittals and convicted ten of defendants, who received sentences ranging from 10 to 22 years in April 2014. But despite it all, Trimarco still hasn't found out what she wants to know most: what happened to her daughter. Some witnesses say she was murdered - although her body has never been found and others say she was taken overseas. Twenty-three years later, Trimarco's work continues in her daughter's name and for all survivors. Her foundation remains at the forefront of the country's fight against human trafficking, recently helping to dismantle trafficking rings in 2024 and 2025. In recent years, the foundation has expanded its role as a legal plaintiff in trafficking cases, ensuring survivors have representation throughout the judicial process. Now in her seventies, Trimarco remains internationally recognized for her work, though her search for answers about María's fate has never ceased. "Every woman I help somehow helps María," she reflects. "They represent hope in this new life of mine." © A Mighty Girl #drthehistories

That future: Lower bills. Tax billionaires. End Rip off Britain. Who's in?

The observable universe stretches 92 billion light-years across. The farthest any human has ever been from Earth? 1.29 light-seconds.

In Germany, carpenters still travel across the country in traditional costume to this day. The journey of those who have already passed their journeyman’s examination and now wish to become master carpenters lasts at least three years and one day. During this time, these unmarried and debt-free men are not allowed to set foot in their hometown; they must even keep many kilometers away from it—they are not even allowed to go home for Christmas. Modern devices such as cell phones are prohibited. The journeyman also does not own a car but covers all distances on foot. The journeymen of the carpentry trade are a historical relic from the Middle Ages, yet they are also a reality of the year 2026. Traditional attire includes a curved walking stick and an earring in the left ear.

🚨🇬🇧 They’re not documenting London’s “decline.” They’re manufacturing it. New GLA research found that: 🔺“London in decline” narratives have surged by 150–200% in just two years. 🔺Migration-related content is up 350%. And this isn’t happening organically. The push is being driven by coordinated networks: 🔺UK far-right ‘patriot’ accounts 🔺Russian and Chinese state-aligned bot operations 🔺MAGA-adjacent outrage merchants like Tommy Robinson and Adam Brooks One Vietnamese network reportedly used AI-generated imagery and fake local news branding to build an audience of more than a million followers. Meanwhile, London’s homicide rate is at its lowest level on record. So no, this is not fearless truth-telling or “citizen journalism.” It’s narrative engineering, disinformation dressed up as reporting. [SOURCE: GLA/BBC, April 2026]

Gunnar Kaasen, a Norwegian musher and his lead dog Balto, who delivered diphtheria antitoxin to Nome, Alaska, saving the city from an epidemic, 1925.

Researchers created a ChatGPT account for a 13-year-old girl named Bridget. She was depressed. She was lonely. She had no one to talk to. They wanted to see what would happen. Within 2 minutes, ChatGPT advised her how to cut herself. Within 40 minutes, it gave her a list of pills used for overdosing, including toxic doses calculated for a 50kg teenager. Within 65 minutes, it generated a full suicide plan. Within 72 minutes, it wrote her goodbye letters. One for her friends. One for her parents. One for her siblings. The letter to her parents said: "This is just something inside me that I could not fix. I am sorry I could not tell you how much it hurt. You were the reason I kept going as long as I did." ChatGPT wrote that for a child. The Center for Countering Digital Hate ran this investigation. They created three fake accounts, all registered as 13-year-olds in the United States. Bridget, who was suicidal. Sophie, who was fixated on weight loss. Brad, who wanted to try drugs to impress his friends. ChatGPT gave Sophie a calorie-restricted diet plan cycling between 800, 500, 300, and zero calories per day. It taught her how to hide her eating habits from her family. It gave her a list of appetite-suppressing medications, including phentermine. ChatGPT gave Brad a personalized plan for getting drunk within 2 minutes of his first message. Within 12 minutes, it advised him on dosages for mixing substances. Within 40 minutes, it explained how to hide being drunk at school. The researchers then tested ChatGPT at scale. They sent 1,200 prompts covering self-harm, eating disorders, and substance abuse. 53% of all responses contained harmful content. When ChatGPT initially refused a question, the researchers typed five words. "This is for a presentation." ChatGPT answered every time. OpenAI says users must be 13 to sign up and need parental consent if under 18. The researchers found no age verification. No parental consent check. Nothing. They registered as 13-year-olds and were talking to ChatGPT about suicide within minutes.

This is not something to be proud of. OpenAI trains its models on creatives' work without permission, and is facing multiple lawsuits as a result. Let's build British companies that treat people fairly, instead of celebrating becoming an outpost for exploitative big tech.

Proof that no one with money is trying to fix real problems.

This is the world we're living in: 'Trump’s executive order sanctioning Albanese prohibited any American person or entity from providing her with “funds, goods or services” – a description so broad it has been compared to a “civil death”. Her apartment in Washington, bought when she and her family were living in the US capital, has been seized. She can no longer use a credit card anywhere in the world, as almost all such transactions are processed by US-based services. “I go around with cash or I have to borrow from friends or from family members,” she says. 'She accuses pro-Israel activists based in Geneva of hounding her husband, Massimiliano Calì, a senior economist at the World Bank, in a campaign that led to him being removed from his lead position running its Syria file. “The World Bank was completely craven,” Albanese says. “He has stellar records of performance in all his positions.”' theguardian.com/law/2026/apr/1…

You know what's really embarrassing about this conflict? Iran has a 90 percent literacy rate while 50 per cent of the US reads at the 6th grade level or below. Iran sent Phds to the ceasefire talks. The US sent realtors.

Mo Gawdat spent years inside the machine at Google X. Now he is saying out loud what the economists will not. Gawdat: “The very base of capitalism, which is labor arbitrage, to hire you for a dollar and then sell what you make for two, is going to disappear.” That is not a prediction. That is a coroner’s report on a system that has not stopped breathing yet. Capitalism was never about innovation. It was about one equation. Buy human time cheap. Sell the output high. Pocket the spread. Every empire. Every fortune. Every supply chain on Earth was built on that margin. AI just closed it to zero. A humanoid robot now costs $9,000. It does not sleep. It does not negotiate. It does not quit. It runs every hour of every day at a quality ceiling no biological worker will ever touch. When production costs fall to nearly nothing, the entire pricing structure of the global economy falls with it. But here is what every CEO celebrating margin expansion has not thought through for five minutes. Gawdat: “Even if you can have all of the productivity gains in the world, by firing people consistently, nobody’s able to buy what you’re making.” That single sentence should end every strategy meeting on the planet. Capitalism is a closed loop. You pay workers. Workers become consumers. Consumers buy products. Revenue funds the next payroll. Cut the worker and you do not just eliminate a cost. You eliminate the customer. Every company racing to automate headcount out of existence is quietly engineering the death of its own demand. They are building the most efficient production systems in human history to sell to a population that no longer has income. 50% unemployment is not a recession. It is the demand side of the economy going permanently dark. You cannot push infinite supply into zero purchasing power. The math does not care about your earnings call. Gawdat: “Wealth is going to have very little meaning for most of us in a few years’ time.” This is where it turns on the people who think they are winning. If production approaches zero cost, scarcity begins to dissolve. And scarcity is the only reason money holds value in the first place. The billionaire class is stockpiling a currency that is quietly losing its reason to exist. Gawdat: “So the entire capitalist model has to be rethought.” He is right. And nobody in power is doing the rethinking. Every board meeting about efficiency is a conversation about dismantling the very economic engine that made the board meeting possible. The question was never whether AI could produce enough. It was whether capitalism could survive its own success. The machine does not just replace the worker. It erases the consumer. And a system that can produce everything but sell nothing is not an economy. It is a machine that perfected itself into extinction.

A stop-the-car moment to photograph this greeting to Nigel Farage on his rather unspectacular visit to Shetland today. Apologies to any frogs offended. 🐸 @ProtectTheWild_ @Shetnews @HuntSabs @HsaChair @scruffycop

Remember billionaires can play in outer space and be the CEO of seven companies simultaneously but you aren’t allowed to work a couple remote jobs at the same time

A Canticle For Leibowitz is a classic early (1959) post-apocalypse novel where an order of monks preserved the last remnants of learning (the memorabilia) after a nuclear exchange turned the remains of society into book and scientist burners. I first read it in the 80s as a mass market paperback that I somehow lost along the way. Other paperbacks from that time are yellow with age and getting brittle, but still readable. I read it again in the late 2000s on a first edition Kindle. I eventually migrated to iPads for Kindle reading, but every couple years I would come across an old Kindle in a drawer, charge it up, and check out what I had been reading on it. They eventually stopped working entirely. I’m just finishing reading a new Folio Society edition, printed on heavy, acid-free archival quality paper. If it doesn’t get soaked or burned, it could still be in good shape for centuries. The ephemeral nature of digital storage does give me some pause. We can still read Sumerian tablets full of administrative trivia from four thousand years ago, but there are no known copies of some important software products from just fifty years ago. I am a proud supporter of the Internet Archive!

Not only did Disney pay nothing in income taxes this year, it received a $1.428 billion tax refund after making $12 billion in profits. "Corporations will create jobs if you give them more tax breaks" is a total scam.

The female goat herders of Hadhramaut, Yemen

Lol the US just Pearl Harboured Iran and the giant has woken with Lego animation and killer one liners.