Sam Smith 🕷

I have written a book, Human Rights and Social Care: Putting Rights into Practice. Find out more about this via my blog curiousgrapevine.wordpress.com or the C-Change Scotland c-change.org.uk #RightsIntoPractice #HumanRights #SocialCare

Let me trace the timeline here because nobody's connecting it. Step 1: Scrape the entire internet. Every book, every article, every conversation, every piece of art, every forum post. Do it without asking. Do it without paying. Step 2: Train a model on all of it. Call it "artificial intelligence." Step 3: Go to BlackRock's Infrastructure Summit and announce: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter." Step 3 is where you sell people's own knowledge back to them. On a meter. They took the collective output of human thought, compressed it into a model, and now they want to charge you by the token to access a version of what you and everyone you know already created. One Reddit user put it perfectly: "They stole all this data from us, the people, our life's work, creativity, art, by devouring the internet and blowing through all copyright laws. Now they want to sell it back to us in the form of a utility." Imagine if someone photocopied every book in the public library, burned the library down, and then opened a subscription service for the copies. That's the metered intelligence business model. And they're pitching it to infrastructure investors as though they invented water.

Some nursing homes struggle to attract visitors. One in the Netherlands chose to invite roommates instead. In the Dutch city of Deventer, a retirement home called Humanitas introduced an idea that would eventually gain attention around the world. Rather than accepting loneliness as a normal part of aging, they approached it as something that could actually be solved. For over ten years, Humanitas has allowed university students to live inside the nursing home rent free. In return, the students spend about thirty hours each month connecting with residents. Sometimes that means sharing meals, having conversations, helping with technology, joining activities, or simply keeping someone company during a quiet afternoon. They are not nurses or employees. They are simply part of the community. At first, the idea sounded like a smart response to expensive student housing. But the real impact appeared in the lives of the residents. Reports from outlets such as PBS NewsHour and AARP described seniors becoming more social, more active, and less isolated once younger people became part of everyday life. What makes the story even more meaningful is that many students chose to spend far more time there than the agreement required. Some even stayed connected after graduating. Over time, casual interactions turned into genuine friendships. Humanitas didn’t really create something new. It brought back something many societies once had naturally: different generations living side by side instead of separately. Maybe the issue was never aging itself. Maybe it was the distance we created between generations. Sometimes the most powerful ideas are simply old human connections rediscovered.

The new Hungarian government of Peter Magyar drops autocratic Viktor Orban's plan to withdraw from the International Criminal Court. Israel's Netanyahu, facing ICC charges, just lost a place to visit in Europe. trib.al/NFKHg0y

A soulless evil husk of a “man”

Bombay, 1885. In a courtroom, a 22-year-old woman listened as a man claimed he had a legal right to her. His name was Dadaji Bhikaji. According to the law, he was her husband. To her, however, he was nothing of the sort. Rukhmabai had been married at the age of eleven. The union had been arranged by her family, as was common for many girls in India at the time. After the wedding ceremony, she returned to live with her mother, expected to join her husband once she reached adulthood. But her life took a different path. After her stepfather's death, her mother married Dr. Sakharam Arjun, a progressive physician who believed in women's education. For the first time, Rukhmabai was given access to learning. She studied English, mathematics, and science, gaining an education that was exceptionally rare for a woman of her era. By the time she reached adulthood, she had made up her mind: she would not live with a man she had never chosen. Dadaji Bhikaji refused to accept her decision. In 1884, he filed a lawsuit seeking the restoration of his “conjugal rights,” asking the court to compel Rukhmabai to move in with him and fulfill the role of a wife. Her response was unequivocal. She did not recognize the marriage as valid. She had been a child, incapable of giving meaningful consent, and she regarded the man as a stranger. Her words caused outrage. In colonial India, child marriage was deeply entrenched in society and supported by long-standing traditions. Challenging the practice meant confronting social norms, religious authorities, and established customs. The case quickly became a national sensation. Newspapers across India and Britain reported on every development. Public opinion was sharply divided. Conservatives accused her of attacking tradition, while reformers saw her struggle as a fight for justice and personal freedom. Rukhmabai refused to remain silent. Writing under the pseudonym “A Hindoo Lady,” she published articles and letters in newspapers, condemning child marriage and criticizing a society that denied education to girls. She described the devastating impact that forced marriages had on the lives of young girls. One of her most famous letters, published in The Times of India in 1885, recounted how child marriage had affected her own life. The letter was reprinted widely and sparked debate far beyond India's borders. Yet public attention could not shield her from the law. In March 1887, the court delivered a harsh ruling. The judge ordered that Rukhmabai must either live with her husband or face six months in prison for contempt of court. Her answer came immediately. She would rather go to prison. The declaration shocked the public. A young woman willingly choosing imprisonment over submission to an unwanted marriage was almost unimaginable at the time. Reactions were swift and intense. Some newspapers attacked her relentlessly, while others rallied to her defense. The controversy reached the highest levels of the British colonial administration. Eventually, an out-of-court settlement was reached. Dadaji Bhikaji agreed to withdraw the case in exchange for financial compensation. Rukhmabai won the freedom she had fought so fiercely to protect. But her story did not end there. Her case had exposed a troubling reality: in India, the legal age of consent was only ten years old. Public pressure and reform campaigns helped bring about legislative change. In 1891, the age of consent was raised to twelve. Although still far too low by modern standards, it marked an important first step toward reform. Then came a new challenge. Determined to become a doctor, Rukhmabai pursued medical studies. After facing obstacles in India, she was admitted to the London School of Medicine for Women. With support from reformers and charitable organizations, she traveled to England to continue her education. She studied there for six years. In 1895, she returned to India as a qualified physician, becoming one of the country's first female doctors. The girl who had been forced into marriage at eleven had become a respected medical professional. For decades, she dedicated her life to treating women and children, improving women's healthcare, and advocating for girls' education. She never married again. When asked why, she reportedly replied with characteristic wit that she had already had enough experience of marriage to last a lifetime. Rukhmabai died in 1955 at the age of ninety-one, having witnessed profound changes in both India and the status of women. For many years, her name remained largely forgotten. Today, she is remembered as a pioneering figure whose courage helped pave the way for reforms in women's and children's rights. It all began in a courtroom, when a judge presented her with two choices: obey or go to prison. She chose freedom.

Russia announces that it will systematically bomb Kyiv, including diplomatic missions. Trump & the US do not even protest. Trump is the greatest coward the US has ever had as president.

It is insulting to every working class family to suggest that it’s somehow part of our culture to be vile, nasty and sexist and that anyone appalled at the Reform candidate in Makerfield’s comments is somekind of middle class pearl clutcher.

‼️Russia openly announced new strikes on Kyiv and urged diplomatic missions and international organizations to leave the city. This means more strikes on Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure - the Russian way of waging a war. Russia must be stopped.

Quite the gent.

Go Leo 👏

Pope Leo XIV: “It is, therefore, not enough to state simply that men and women have equal dignity and rights; it is necessary that this be reflected in concrete decisions, such as in laws, access to employment, education, social and political responsibilities, and the way society listens to and values women’s contributions. As long as this gap persists, we cannot say that society truly and fully recognizes that women have the same dignity as men.”

Zelenskyy: Russians just destroyed the Chornobyl museum — built one month ago. Crazy assholes. We strike military targets — weapons production, energy that funds their army. Russia hits museums, schools, apartments. 1/

@TiceRichard It’s disappointing when you respond to detailed analysis with name calling. If you think our analysis is wrong, then please identify the errors or publish your own.

This time of year, we put our 16-year-olds through a coming-of-age ritual. We make them sit in rows and write down things they have spent the last two years trying to memorise. We pit them against the clock, and prevent them from talking to each other. We tell them that this is the most important thing that they will ever do and their future life depends on it. We don’t just do this once. For most of them, we make them sit in rows and write things down between twenty and thirty separate times in the space of about six weeks. Maths, English, History, French, Biology….Again and again, they have to keep at it. Each time, we tell them how important it is and they better not have an off-day or be ill. Then we take their papers and we rank them. For some, the result will be accolades and glory. For others, failure and retakes. We know for sure that this will always be true, because these rituals that we call exams are designed to rank them. A third will always fail. There would be no top grades if we didn’t also have the bottom. It isn’t possible for them all to pass. And yet, every year, we talk as if this was not true. We pretend that it would be possible for them all to succeed, if only they and their teachers worked harder. Politicians talk about raising standards and accountability. We pretend that the problem is them not working hard enough, not an exam system designed so that hundreds of thousands fail. We blame them, not the exams. For the truth is that we have a coming-of-age ritual for our teenagers which involves a third of them being told they haven’t met the grade, that they are not good enough. We launch them into adult life telling them that they will carry the stigma of not understanding quadratic equations for ever. We put them all through intense stress, and then when some of them cave in we say they have anxiety and send them to see a therapist. And then we’re surprised when many of them say they just can’t carry on, that they don’t see the point. They don’t see potential in the future for themselves. We need to take a step back and ask ourselves why we do this to our teenagers. For the problem isn’t our young people. It’s not their fault that a third of them fail and many are chronically stressed. The problem is what we make them do. We’ve designed a coming-of-age system with a very high cost in human misery. Every year a new crop of teens will come of age, and despite their distress we just push them harder. We need to ask ourselves whether this is really the best we can do for our teenagers. We urgently need to think again.

Thomas Massie says he plans to publicly read the names of Epstein clients before leaving Congress. If he follows through, Washington is about to enter full panic mode.

Here’s a thought — Maybe these people don’t deserve to be handsomely rewarded?

Can someone explain to me why the so called civilized world can't bring itself together to stop russia from bombing the biggest country in Europe after over 4 years of full-scale war? Wtf is more important than stopping this?

Inflation “unexpectedly” fell by 0.5% to 2.8% Growth was an “unexpected” 0.7% - the highest in the G7 Net immigration “unexpectedly” fell by 82% NHS “unexpectedly” met it’s interim 18 week target Our media have so deceived the public that all positive news is now “unexpected”

The real welfare queen in America is Jeff Bezos, worth $279 billion, who pays wages so low his workers rely on food stamps and Medicaid while he sailed on his $500 million yacht to his $55 million wedding to give his wife a $5 million ring because his tax rate is less than 1%.