Dispatch #22
Read about a Dutch euthanasia-influencer, algorithms predicting the risk of reoffending across Spanish prisons, tips to reduce food waste, and a new lease of life for Arab women in the diaspora.
Hello and welcome to Translator’s weekly Dispatch.
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From this week, we return to our regular Dispatches schedule, where we bring you summaries of four compelling stories written beyond the Anglosphere.
In the Netherlands, an influencer fooled his followers by turning their mental illness and euthanasia plans into viral content.
Across Spanish prisons, outdated machine-learning algorithms predict the risk of reoffending and halt the release of potentially low-risk offenders.
Meanwhile, Arab women in the diaspora discover new freedoms after fifty - a new lease of life beyond shame and other cultural constraints.
And lastly, a Romanian journalist offers tips to reduce food waste, a global problem affecting us all.
We hope you enjoy the read.
P.S.: In the meantime, tell us what you like and dislike, themes you’d like to see explored from the perspective of different linguistic media landscapes. And, as ever, feel free to recommend specific pieces we should summarise for our Dispatches, or translate in full for the magazine.
Here’s what we’re looking for and how to let us know.
The Digital Death Spiral
What happens when an influencer turns their mental illness and euthanasia plans into viral content?
In this unsettling longread, Maud Effting and Haro Kraak investigate the rise of Ghanaian-British influencer Joseph Awuah-Darko, who shocked the internet by announcing his plan to die by legal euthanasia in the Netherlands due to bipolar disorder. His announcement, made in a tearful, cinematic Instagram video, launched a global phenomenon: The Last Supper Project, a series of dinners with followers celebrating life before death. What followed was a whirlwind of attention, money, media coverage and deep concern. With over 570,000 followers and monetised interactions including paid “virtual dinners,” subscription newsletters, and influencer-style suicide confessions, Awuah-Darko turned euthanasia into an aesthetic and a brand.
But behind the viral success, there are glaring contradictions. De Volkskrant reveals that Awuah-Darko has not even begun the Dutch legal process required for euthanasia, which is notoriously rigorous and can take years. He has no general practitioner, no psychiatric diagnosis deeming him ‘beyond treatment’, and has only just begun EMDR therapy. Despite presenting euthanasia as imminent, his public claims don't align with reality, a distortion with serious consequences, particularly for followers grappling with their own mental health struggles. Suicide prevention groups warn his posts risk romanticising euthanasia and encouraging copycat behaviour. In a media climate already grappling with the ethical implications of influencer culture, Awuah-Darko’s case sits at a volatile intersection of vulnerability, performance, and profit.
The article also uncovers troubling allegations: multiple Ghanaian artists claim he owes them over $360,000 from art sales, describing a manipulative pattern of apparent sympathy, delays, and emotional blackmail. Others point to inconsistencies in his reported personal history, including conflicting details about abuse claims against renowned artist Kehinde Wiley. These revelations raise further questions about narrative ownership, audience manipulation, and the growing role of trauma as social capital.
In an era where mental health is often content, Awuah-Darko’s story forces a reckoning: what are the ethics of turning suicidal ideation into spectacle? How should platforms and followers respond when storytelling about pain becomes indistinguishable from branding? And what responsibilities do public figures have when their words may shape life-or-death choices for others?
Meanwhile, the UK enters a new chapter: the Commons has just approved the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, 314–291. With support from Keir Starmer and prominent campaigners like Esther Rantzen, the law would allow terminally ill adults (with under six months to live) to legally self-administer euthanasia under safeguards including two doctors and a review panel.
The bill moves next to the House of Lords. Public surveys show about 73–75% support though critics like care-rights groups and some medics caution about weakened safeguards and potential coercion. Implementation decisions such as whether the NHS will deliver the service directly, as in the Netherlands, or via third parties are now underway.
Awuah‑Darko’s dramatic, staged mortality may resonate emotionally, but it distorts the reality of assisted dying. In the UK’s developing law, the focus is on structured, regulated choice, very far removed from influencer-led spectacle. His viral narrative contrasts sharply with the measured legal safeguards that aim to protect vulnerable people, underscoring how different the performance of death can be when mediated by content creators. While Awuah-Darko claims to be breaking taboos, critics argue he’s dangerously bending the truth, performing his pain for an audience addicted to vulnerability.
Original article (“Deze influencer vertelde een ongelooflijk verhaal over zijn naderende dood door euthanasie. Maar wat voor effect heeft dit op zijn volgers?”) by Maud Effting and Haro Kraak was first published in Dutch on 3 June 2025.
It’s available here.
de Volkskrant is a leading Dutch national daily known for its in-depth investigative journalism and coverage of politics, culture, and social issues.
Summary by ZN
Freedom by Numbers
More than 200 court rulings in 2024 cite an algorithm that classifies foreign prisoners without ties as high risk, even if they lack other risk factors
In 1993, two beekeepers stumbled upon a gruesome discovery in a ditch near the La Romana ravine in Valencia: the graves of three teenage girls Toñi, Miriam, and Desiré, whose bodies began to surface after a night of torrential rain. What followed was a national reckoning. The Spanish Civil Guard quickly uncovered the extent of the crime: these girls had been brutally tortured, raped and murdered. Known now as the Alcàsser Murders, the case transfixed Spain; its lurid details and courtroom drama unfolding nightly on television. The trauma endures: a recent Netflix documentary revived the unease, reintroducing the crime to a global audience.
But the legacy of the Alcàsser case reaches beyond collective memory. In a recent exposé for Civio, journalist Ter García traces how the crime catalyzed a new form of state logic: the creation of an algorithm to assess the risk of prison leave. Known as the Table of Risk Variables (TVR), the tool, introduced in the mid-1990s, was designed to quantify the probability that an inmate might violate the terms of their exit permit. “In those years, no one was doing that,” says José Ángel Brandariz, a criminal law scholar.
“The context was very pressing,” recalls Clemente, a legal psychology expert from the University of A Coruña. One of the perpetrators of the Alcàsser Murders had escaped from prison the previous year using a prison permit. In the aftermath of the murders, public anxiety soared. The TVR offered a bureaucratic balm, a promise that science and objectivity could replace fallible human judgement in determining who could be safely released, and when.
Yet, thirty-two years later, the same formula remains unchanged. García reports that in 2024 alone the TVR was cited in more than 200 rulings to override the recommendation of prison officials and deny prison release permits. “It’s a system that’s preventing more inmates from going out onto the streets to avoid problems, even at the cost of their rehabilitation,” Clemente warns.
Critics of the algorithm argue that its foundations are flawed. Margarita Aguilera, an advocate for incarcerated women, notes that the model’s original data sample consisted of just 1,500 inmates, of which only 62 were women. “It’s based on a population that bears no relation to today’s”, she says, adding that the reasons why a woman might violate a permit can differ profoundly from those of men.
Foreign nationals fare worst under the TVR. Non-EU prisoners are automatically assigned the highest risk, regardless of their behaviour or other metrics. “Foreigners are screwed,” says Carlos García Cataño. “And even if you have legal roots, if you’re serving time outside your home religion, they won’t give you a permit either”.
Perhaps most troubling of all is the algorithm’s middling accuracy. According to García’s research, the TVR correctly predicts permit violations only 53.33% to 69.69% of the time, a coin toss in the bureaucratic frame.
Calls for reform have gone largely unanswered. Clemente, who once hoped the algorithm might evolve, now seems resigned. “To this day I haven't heard anything,” he says: “which I find serious.”
Original article (“Las prisiones españolas usan un algoritmo sin actualizar desde 1993 para decidir sobre permisos de salida”) by Ter García was first published in Spanish on 26 February 2025.
It’s available here.
Civio is the first organisation in Spain to specialise in monitoring public authorities, which they achieve through data journalism. They call for transparent governments and institutions.
Summary by TMH.
With food waste, the personal is political
In a personal but wide-ranging article for the Romanian online platform Scena9, the journalist Oana Filip explores the thorny issue of food waste. While the piece focuses on Filip’s home country, the story is global in scope - and offers practical tips for anyone looking to reduce the amount of food they throw away
War in Europe and the Middle East. The rise of the far-right in the US, the EU and beyond. The climate crisis. A growing chasm between rich and poor.
When we turn on the news it is easy to feel overwhelmed, and powerless as individuals to influence global events. But there is one area where we can all make a real and immediate difference, according to the Romanian journalist Oana Filip. Start by opening your fridge and taking a look inside.
Her article begins in her own kitchen and a refrigerator stuffed with leftovers from the then recent Easter. A pile of offal, lamb steak and soup, pasca with salty cheese, cozonac, cherry roulade and schnitzel. She described the remnants of the traditional Romanian feast as “more than a family of four could realistically consume.” And therefore much of it destined for the bin.
Each year, the average Romanian household throws away 70 kilograms of food. Unlike with other elements of the climate crisis, where complex industrial systems and large companies such as oil producers play an outsized role, when it comes to food waste, the actions of individuals and families can have a significant impact.
In the EU as a whole, households are responsible for more than half of all food waste. And the environmental toll is staggering: one kilogram of unused beef represents 50,000 litres of wasted water. Pouring away a single glass of milk squanders 1,000 litres used along the supply chain.
The food industry does play a role too, and Filip doesn’t let it off the hook. Farming practices, supermarket promotions, and strict aesthetic standards all contribute to the problem. She cites the case of Lay’s crisps, which can reject - and therefore waste - potatoes if they do not fit strict criteria. But she insists that change must also come from below, particularly in wealthier countries where overbuying is the norm.
Filip is careful not to moralise. For much of history, she points out, the challenge was not to throw away less food, but to find enough to eat in the first place. Romania’s own experience bears this out: until the 1990s, scarcity was a defining feature of everyday life. The abundance that some of us enjoy today, she writes, is historically new: “from this point of view, it is understandable that we still do not know exactly how to behave.”
Still, awareness is growing. In Romania, food banks are on the rise, and legislation is coming into force that encourages restaurants and retailers to speed-up turnover and donate excess stock. The EU, too, has made tackling food waste a priority. But Filip is clear: policy changes only go so far. Tackling food waste requires shifts in mindset and behaviour - at home, in the fridge, and around the bin.
To this end, she offers a list of no-nonsense tips to help readers do their part. These include:
Track your habits: Keep a food-waste diary to identify what you're throwing away and why.
Track the cost: Each time you throw food away, write down its estimated value. At the end of a set period, calculate how much money you’ve wasted.
Create a "fast food" zone: Designate a shelf or box for items nearing expiry so you remember to use them up first.
Declutter your storage: Do a full clean-out of your fridge and pantry; discard expired items and give away anything you're unlikely to eat, even if it’s technically still good.
Store food smartly: Use fridge zones properly. The door should be for sauces and drinks; the lower shelf for meat; the middle shelf for leftovers; the top for dairy products and eggs. Keep fruit and veg unwrapped in a separate drawer.
Shop mindfully: Make a list before shopping, and avoid going to the store hungry to cut down on impulse buys that go uneaten.
Trust your senses: Many foods are actually safe past their "best before" date; if they look, smell, and taste fine, they’re probably still good.
Share surplus: If you’ve overcooked, offer leftovers to friends, neighbours, or colleagues instead of binning them.
Repurpose leftovers: Use websites for creative leftover recipes. Filip cites her own experience of turning a leftover Easter cake into a pudding - a nod to one small change that just might make a bigger difference.
Original article (“Ne place mâncarea. Atunci de ce o aruncăm?”) by Oana Filip first published in Romanian on 24 April 2025.
It’s available here.
Scena9 is an independent outlet about cultural life in Romania and beyond.
Summary by TM
Time Is Finally Theirs To Shape
Arab women in the diaspora discover new freedoms after fifty, liberated from the cultural constraints of their homelands and empowered to reinvent themselves on their own terms
In this article for Raseef22, Sarah Daly recounts how in Arab societies – as in many others – women often feel their lives are governed by rigid socially determined timelines: marry young, raise children, and conform to the expectations of others before time “runs out.” This cultural stopwatch, according to which the time for dreaming is over by middle age, traditionally ties women’s value to youth, beauty and marital status. Outside their homelands, however, many Arab women are discovering that those rules and benchmarks no longer apply. In a moving reflection, Daly explores how diaspora offers Arab women the space to thrive, especially after the age of fifty.”
Through personal narrative and anecdotal testimony, the piece portrays a world in which mature Arab women are beginning anew. In countries where age is not weaponised against them, they return to school, change careers, explore personal style, and speak freely. “Time becomes theirs,” writes the author, echoing the sentiments of many women who feel they can finally live without judgment. Where once they were scrutinised for every personal choice, now they claim solitude, independence, and possibility.
This transformation is not always easy. The shift comes with a reckoning which involves looking back on lives constrained by social duty and reflecting on what might have been. But it is also imbued with joy and agency. One woman, for instance, tells of wearing a green coat in Paris simply because she liked it, not to impress or please, but for herself. This simple act, insignificant in another context, becomes revolutionary in its assertion of selfhood.
Importantly, the piece makes clear that this flourishing is not about Western assimilation but self-liberation. These women are not fleeing Arab identity instead they are reclaiming parts of it that patriarchy and custom suppressed. For many, exile offers not escape, but clarity. It allows them to live beyond what their mothers and grandmothers were allowed to imagine.
Ultimately, the article is a celebration of what becomes possible when time, age, and womanhood are not defined by tradition or shame. It is a powerful meditation on how diaspora can serve as fertile ground for late-blooming freedom, and how reinvention is not a luxury but a right.
Original article (“في المهجر… لماذا تزدهر النساء العربيات بعد سنّ الخمسين؟في المهجر… لماذا تزدهر النساء العربيات بعد سنّ الخمسين؟”) by Sarah Daly was first published in Arabic on 8 May 2025.
It’s available here.
Raseef22, a Beirut-based independent media platform that publishes in Arabic and English, known for its progressive and critical coverage of politics, gender, and social issues across the Arab world.
Summary by ZN
That’s all for now – we hope you’ve enjoyed the read. Keep an eye out for our next Dispatch of summaries this time next week!
The Translator team