Crashed

[Crashed @Crashed7]

Sounds familiar.

[Crashed @Crashed7]

Jemima Goldsmith's response to Dan Neidle's article.

The point made by Dan was that the woman was prevented by the injunction from speaking to anyone, for life, about her allegations. Ms Goldsmith has since asked for the injunction to be changed. Brand hasn't.

[Jemima Goldsmith @Jemima_Khan]

I am going to describe some painful and personal things in relation to Russell Brand because I have been put in a position now where I feel that I have no choice other than to do so, given the misleading reports and speculation around the facts of a harassment injunction that was taken out to protect me and my family.

Firstly, and most importantly, I am and have always been strongly and unequivocally on the side of all of Brand’s victims. I am in awe of the courageous women who came forward at Brand’s trial, told their stories, testified and ensured justice was done. I have had my own personal experience of his violence, coercive control and abuse. I had to call the police to have him removed from my house in 2014 during a violent incident. I chose not to press charges at the time and not to go public with this, as I was worried about the impact of the press attention on my then teenage children. I have neither seen nor spoken to Brand since that period in 2014. Whilst my pain in relation to this, pales in comparison to what the women have testified in court have suffered, this was a difficult period in my life which has had a lasting impact.

Over several years, I assisted the journalists who finally exposed him; Ros Urwin, Louisa Compton and Dorothy Byrne.  I also undertook to testify in court to his abusiveness, if the newspaper that published the victims’ accounts were ever to be sued.

I have spent much of my professional career trying to support unfairly demonised and silenced women, such as Monica Lewinsky and defending free speech.

In 2014, a harassment injunction was taken out against a woman called Szilvia Berki which was made final in 2015. 

I fully understand the good intentions of those now advocating on her behalf online and agree with their demand for this harassment injunction to be varied, as my lawyer made clear to Berki’s lawyer in December last year.

However, the commentary and media reporting this week has presented an untrue narrative, which has opened me up to vile hatred and abuse online.

For this reason, and to correct the record, I am providing the factual background to that injunction to explain why The High Court found the campaign of harassment by Berki against me to be, "oppressive and unacceptable” and made the order permanent.

The background to this is that Ms Berki came to my house for roughly 30 minutes in June 2014, after I booked her to give a massage to Brand. By the time she arrived he had decided he didn’t want a massage and asked her to leave. She was clearly offended. I was present the whole time he was with her, and I did not see anything untoward, despite the fact that he was later found guilty of sexually assaulting other women and he later physically assaulted me. If I saw any man abuse any woman under any circumstances, I would do my utmost to stop them, without hesitation.

Ms Berki later reported to the police that Brand had pushed her in the back whilst she was leaving the house and that she also said she was “attacked” by my dog, which she described in her police statement as my dog licking her face. The police rightly investigated Ms Berki’s complaint. I cooperated fully with the investigation, provided a truthful statement about what I saw and also provided CCTV footage, which showed my overly exuberant but totally unaggressive dog jumping up.  

Following an investigation into Ms Berki’s allegations, police concluded that there was no case to answer and that no criminal offence had been committed.

According to the police, at no time did Ms Berki ever state to them that she had been assaulted, threatened or falsely imprisoned.

There was also a subsequent review of the investigation by the IPCC and Thames Valley Police Professional Standards which found that the original police investigation had been correct in its findings.

In the meantime, several untrue stories appeared in the tabloid papers. Ms Berki forwarded an email to me confirming a payment for one such story she had received from The Sun newspaper. Articles were also published in The Telegraph, The Mail and The Mirror at Ms Berki’s instigation which contained her account of the alleged incident.

Then having at first said in a story published by the Daily Mail that she had found me to be “really very nice, very, very nice,” she later embarked on a campaign of vicious antisemitic and threatening abuse online and in emails.

Below is just a sample of some of those tweets and messages sent over many months (which were submitted to the judge who granted the harassment injunction)-

(Jemima is a) “deeply rotted JEWISH Bitch”

“Did you know that if your life is in danger you can LAWFULLY kill your attacker as defence?! … by now I could have lawfully kill at least 5-6 people who were hurting me”

“Also happy birthday (Jemima). I hope you have more. In other words I hope you don’t die this year.”

EMAIL- “If you make me very upset…you can expect the worts from me – I think you know this – without that I need to remind you”

“What is going on in Britain is a dictatory of J evils. English Jewish Evil dictatory”

“Would like to see justice, and I do not think that I should do it myself but what can I do when every organisation is scared of Jevils! ;)”

“They say … Do not hate all Jews because you know a few Jewish evils. They are on top always decadent and evils”

“Fortunately there are many mansions outside of the UK where Jewish money aristocrats are still not welcomed

#Germany #Austria #Italy #Hungary”

"Judge on High Court: I ordered her to shut up Jew. Do I have a case or not? soon we will kill her then".

“A pity that I was in the UK. BB In Hungary if you would report the Police they would for sure find it without an investigation already that the Jews are guilty. Sad”

“Every organisation is scared of JEVILS”

“When my great grandparents see what Jews did to me they do something in heaven to solve this. I will not make my hand dirty with Jews.”

“J evils … Rob, lie, crime”

“I am so happy I am free from the English Jewish Evil dictator and outside of England the High Court cannot rule”

“Probably I wait a bit more and than go public. What is going on in Britain is a dictatory of J evils.”

She sent an enormous volume of similarly disturbing emails and tweets to or about me, to my family, to my workplace, to journalists from the national media to members of my family, to UNICEF UK where I had been a goodwill Ambassador for decades, and to organisations my ex-husband was associated with, and to MPs.

She began disseminating on social media wild and untrue allegations about me, ranging from kidnap to cyberhacking, to having someone bump into her and laugh at her in the tube station, having her followed by two men, bribing the police, paying off a judge, and other false and alarming conspiracy theories based on my Jewishness.

The number, tone and content of these messages was extremely frightening. It was distressing for my then teenage children and my family. I was concerned that Ms Berki was potentially a real danger to my family and me. I have had stalkers before and this behaviour felt similarly threatening.

Although I was at this point no longer in contact with Brand, I agreed to the suggestion by his lawyer of a harassment order. My sole reason was to stop Ms Berki targeting me and my family. The harassment injunction was upheld by the High Court and Court of Appeal on several occasions.

I engaged a lawyer of my own when I was made aware that Berki was applying to the court to vary the terms of the injunction. And I instructed my lawyer in December last year to approach Ms Berki’s barrister to say that I agreed to vary the injunction so that she could speak to the police again if she wanted to. I also instructed my lawyer to engage on her other requests.

I did this despite my real fears that the harassment would re-commence and that her threatening antisemitism, if again unleashed, might exacerbate the danger to my children and me that we continue to face because of our Jewish heritage and their father’s political career and incarceration in Pakistan.

Her barrister has not responded to my lawyer since May of this year despite trying to engage him. I was informed by her lawyer that any change to the injunction must also be agreed by Brand.  I have no ability to compel Brand in this matter, as I have not seen or spoken to him in over a decade.

I hope this information will help clarify speculation about my involvement in the anti-harassment order.

I am glad and relieved that Russell Brand has finally faced justice.

[Crashed @Crashed7]

@jan_murray That's a v good video. Thanks for sharing.

[Crashed @Crashed7]

This was such an informative/ interesting video.
Many workplaces, communities and institutions are attractive to abusers. They're guaranteed access to vulnerable people
Sometimes the people who shout the loudest about 'protection of women and kids' are the ones we need to watch

[Janet Murray @jan_murray]

Imagine being in your first week of social work training and being told that some of your fellow students might be there to gain access to vulnerable children.

Shocking, right? But this social worker’s point applies anywhere adults work with children. Some people will seek out those roles for the wrong reasons. And the person whose behaviour you need to question might be the nicest person you know.

She also makes an important point about why safeguarding starts with having a clear sense of what’s normal and what isn’t. Once that boundary starts to blur, it’s easier for someone to cross it without being challenged.

I wish I’d seen this video years ago. I can think of times when something felt off and I kept quiet because I worried I might be wrong or cause offence.

Thanks @JournalistJill for highlighting it.

[Crashed @Crashed7]

Lol ...

[TizzyEnt @TizzyEnt]

That's an expensive way to own the libs

[Crashed @Crashed7]

The playbook for grifters everywhere

[HUMAN WA$TE @Dplanet]

🚨🇬🇧 Young Bob calls himself a free speech martyr. His modus operandi is simple: provoke, film, fundraise.

In 48 hours this week, he was arrested on suspicion of affray outside UCL, posted a video asking for donations, and gained a volunteer security detail. By its own account, that group has protected Tommy Robinson and Britain First’s Paul Golding.

We've all seen Bob being attacked and threatened. I’ve seen the footage. I’ll be honest about my first reaction. Watching him corner people who’ve taken racist abuse their whole lives, I understand why someone snaps. Smug, hateful provocation works.

But that’s what he’s counting on, and I hate it. Every punch becomes a clip. The clip becomes proof of persecution. The proof becomes a donation link.

He calls it 'civilised debate', and he models it on Charlie Kirk’s campus tables. Plato had a word for it: eristic. Arguing to win, whatever the truth. Schopenhauer wrote the manual. Make your opponent angry, because angry people argue badly. Then play to the crowd.

Here’s Bob’s version.

1. Pick the ground. Speakers’ Corner. Whitechapel. Outside UCL. Camden, alongside Restore Britain canvassers. Places where the people walking past are most likely to take it personally.

2. Arrive rehearsed. The same lines, hundreds of times. The person he stops is meeting them for the first time.

3. Rig the stakes. For him, deportation is a debating topic. For the person in front of him, it’s their home and their family. One side is playing a game. The other is defending their existence.

4. Provoke. He calls immigration “demographic replacement,” the language of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. 'Remigration' is just another word for ethnic cleansing. He defends the P-word as “just an abbreviation.” Ask anyone who grew up having it shouted at them whether that’s a debating point.

5. Frame the reaction. Anger becomes proof. In his latest video, he says the era of debate may be over. Then he promises to keep showing his opponents as “violent, irrational and emotional.” That’s the content plan, in his own words.

6. Post the win. Every clip is a win, because he picks the clips.

Wanting to win isn’t the problem. The Oxford Union prepares hard too. It also gives both sides the same notice, a neutral chair and a full record. Bob’s format strips all three out.

He has now been arrested seven times without charge. An arrest is content whether or not a charge follows. The van, the cuffs, “two-tier Britain.” Then the donation link.

He started this at 16. Adults built the platform around him. Rebel News flew its founder to London to meet him and promoted a “Save Young Bob” site. He has campaigned for Restore Britain. He has talked about getting security since June. Now a group from the Robinson and Golding circuit says it will guard him.

Their statement says they’re there to prevent confrontation. But a man whose format runs on a reaction now arrives with a crew.

I want to live in a country where people can debate important things without being assaulted. That even includes him.

The law protects him from violence. It doesn’t protect him from us seeing exactly who he is and what he's doing. He seeks out Britons who’ve lived with racism their whole lives, provokes them for the camera, and posts the reaction to his followers. I hate that, but violence plays right into his chubby little hands.

[GET A GRIP @docrussjackson]

I don’t recall any full-page Mail splashes about Thatcher “fawning over Jimmy Savile.” She made four attempts to have the disgraced sexual abuser knighted before succeeding in 1990, despite pleas and warnings from concerned aides.

Savile, a practising Roman Catholic who identified with the Christian faith. was also awarded a Papal knighthood by Pope John Paul II in 1990.

The only front-page Mail splash about Savile I can readily find is the one that used the scandal to criticise the @BBC.

With Brand, within months of the allegations becoming public he had “found Jesus,” and within a year he was being platformed by prominent #MAGA figures and American Christians.

TIMELINE

15 September 2023 (evening):

Brand posts the video “This is happening,” preemptively denying “very serious criminal allegations” and calling them a coordinated media attack.

Elon Musk replies the same evening: “Of course. They don’t like competition.”

16 September 2023:

Channel 4’s Dispatches (Russell Brand: In Plain Sight) airs alongside the joint Times/Sunday Times investigation. Four women allege rape, sexual assault and abusive behaviour.

Bev Turner of GB News replies to Brand’s denial video, tweeting that he is being attacked by establishment media, that he is welcome on her show anytime, and that “You’re a hero.”

17 September 2023:

Metropolitan Police receive the first formal report of a sexual assault; more complaints follow.

Elon Musk posts “I support Russell Brand. That man is not evil.”

Andrew Tate posts “Welcome to the club.”

Tucker Carlson suggests the claims are punishment for criticising drug companies and the Ukraine war.

Laurence Fox posts a video questioning the allegations, including the line: “It’s fascinating to see some parts of the legacy media talking about Russell Brand like we are going to believe anything they say about anything.”

Katie Hopkins posts a YouTube video titled “Russell Brand: keep going lovely. Every day is a day of DEFIANCE.”

18 September 2023:

Bev Turner defends her previous post on air on GB News during a live clash with co-host Andrew Pierce (who called the tweet “shameful”). She maintains she has spoken to sources and remains “confident there is no smoking gun,” describing the Dispatches allegations as “flimsy.”

Nigel Farage, on his GB News show, discusses the Dispatches allegations. He says he is not a fan of Brand, but adds that Brand has “upset some very powerful people… big government… big pharma… Bill Gates,” and that “if you go out there and upset people, big powerful people, you’ve got to be pretty clear that there’s nothing they can really hit you back with.”

Late 2023–early 2024:

Brand begins publicly exploring Christianity, wearing a cross, reading the Bible, and discussing faith on his shows.

30 January 2024:

Appears on The Tucker Carlson Show in his first major interview since the allegations. Carlson claims “governments colluded to shut down and destroy” him.

28 April 2024:

Baptised in the River Thames. He describes it as an opportunity “to die and be reborn” in Christ’s name and leave the past behind. He continues to identify publicly as a Christian thereafter.

The conversion, combined with his anti-establishment commentary, accelerates his acceptance on the American right.

6–7 June 2024:

Brand appears on Donald Trump Jr.’s Rumble show (Triggered). Brand posts a photo of himself and Jr. on 7 June 2024 with the caption “I had a wonderful time with @DonaldJTrumpJr while here in Florida.”

July 2024:

Attends the Republican National Convention and interviews figures including Eric Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy. He interviews Ramaswamy live on his Rumble show from the convention.

4 September 2024:

Appears live with Tucker Carlson as the special guest on the opening night of Carlson’s tour in Phoenix. Brand kneels in prayer on stage.

29 September 2024:

Speaks at the “Rescue the Republic” rally alongside RFK Jr. and Jordan Peterson.

Late 2024:

Attends a gala at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago linked to America’s Future (Michael Flynn’s group).

20 January 2025:

Attends the MAHA Inaugural Ball on the day of Trump’s second inauguration.2025:
Continues regular appearances in MAGA/MAHA spaces.

16 February 2025:

RFK Jr. posts a photo of himself with Brand and Mehmet Oz / Dr Oz on

16 October 2025:

Brand speaks at a Turning Point USA campus event at the University of Oklahoma (with Savannah Chrisley and Gov. Kevin Stitt) as part of the post-Kirk tour.

18 December 2025:

Brand speaks at Turning Point’s AmericaFest (the first since Charlie Kirk’s death).

April/May 2026:

Publishes How to Become a Christian in Seven Days with Tucker Carlson Books. Carlson calls him “one of the people I most admire.”

29 September 2026:

Brand moderates a panel with Mehmet Oz at the MAHA Summit in Washington (less than two weeks before his UK trial). He also appeared with RFK Jr. and Oz at the event.

5 November 2026:

Brand is found guilty at Southwark Crown Court of:

One count of rape: anally raping a 21-year-old fan at his home in Hampstead in 2009 after meeting her at a stand-up show at the Hammersmith Apollo.

Three counts of sexual assault:

groping an MTV worker (grabbing her breasts) at a party in a Soho bar in 2004;

kissing and groping a radio station worker (pinning her against a wall, grabbing her face, touching her breasts and bottom) at a London radio station (Choice FM / Capital) in 2004 or 2005;

sexually assaulting a Channel 4 worker in 2009 by demanding a massage and then pressing his face/head into her groin area during the recording of an advertisement.

Brand is now under investigation for two further rape allegations, and the Metropolitan Police have submitted files to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Have there been any sustained calls for Christian leaders or communities to speak out and condemn the behaviour of Christians more broadly because of the actions of Christian abusers Brand and Savile?

No. Of course not.

That demand appears largely reserved for Muslims, despite the fact that every religion and political ideology has sexual abusers in its ranks.

Approximately 450 people (of whom 328 were minors at the time) came forward with allegations of sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile, according to the official joint Metropolitan Police and NSPCC report Giving Victims a Voice (published January 2013).

[Mike Stuchbery @MikeStuchbery_]

Look, I might have lost track of things in not being so Extremely Online these days, but you're saying that a big part of Andrew Tate's extradition case rests on him NOT owning the @ofwudan account?

Cos, well...

[Crashed @Crashed7]

This such a good thread

[tern @1goodtern]

Everyone knows that cocaine traffic is controlled by *very bad people*.

[Mike Stuchbery @MikeStuchbery_]

So, @bylinetimes asked me to comment on the sentencing of 'Tommy Robinson' for harassment causing fear of violence.

I had a few things to say.

https://t.co/kSPZ7JqmxZ

[Crashed @Crashed7]

There's the truth. It toom a while but they got there in the end. The law doesn't apply to the US

[Argemino Barro @Argemino]

Los periodistas británicos son mucho más duros que los estadounidenses. Por eso pasan cosas como esta:

(El entrevistado es Steven Cortes, aliado de Donald Trump. El entrevistador es Mehdi Hasan).

[GET A GRIP @docrussjackson]

🧵

“These are my principles. If you don’t like them, well, I have others.”

For more than a year, Rupert Lowe made trial by jury one of his signature causes. When the Labour government proposed moving most Crown Court cases to judges sitting alone, few politicians were louder in opposition.

“Jury trials help to protect the British people from an increasingly two-tier justice system,” he posted in July 2025, asking why the government was “so terrified of decent British people sitting on juries”.

In November: “We must defend the jury trial. That is absolutely vital.” In December, scrapping jury trials was “pure legal vandalism” and “a thundering disgrace”.

In January 2026 he praised the Labour MP Karl Turner for “leading the way on jury trials”. In March he announced: “I just voted in Parliament to protect jury trials.”

He also put his name to something more considered. On 26 November 2025, Lowe was among the signatories of a letter to David Lammy, led by Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch, urging the government not to abolish the right to be tried by one’s peers. Juries, the letter argued, are “a safety valve in a free society”. Without them, “communities will feel judged by a distant establishment”. And then the line that matters most: “When a jury speaks, the public accepts the verdict even when it is unpopular, because it is their neighbours who have decided.”

Three months later, Lowe co-authored Restore Britain’s policy paper “Retaking the English Castle”, which commits the party to preserving trial by jury in all criminal cases. The paper praises juries for keeping the law “responsive to the ordinary conscience”, and singles out a jury that acquitted a former Royal Marine charged after the Southport murders “within a mere 17 minutes, showing heroic contempt for the prosecutors”.

On 19 October 2026, Tommy Robinson went on trial at Southwark Crown Court, charged with two counts of harassment causing fear of violence. Opening the case, prosecutor Ben Holt told jurors that Robinson had used “bully-boy, intimidatory tactics” against two journalists, Andrew Young and Jacob Dirnhuber, after the Daily Mail reported on him holidaying in Cyprus while riots spread across Britain in August 2024.

The jury heard that Robinson sent messages including “I’ll be knocking at your door” and “let your bosses know I’m coming to all of your houses”, and that photographs of Young’s wife and children were posted on his @X account. Dirnhuber had to move house. Young was given a close protection officer.

The judge, Mr Justice Cavanagh, was explicit with the jury: “This is not a trial about or an assessment of the defendant’s political views.”

On 28 October, after more than eleven hours of deliberation, nine men and three women convicted Robinson on both counts by a majority of ten to two. He faces up to ten years in prison and will be sentenced on 16 December. Robinson called the verdict “insane”.

Lowe’s response came within hours: “it is my view that the system has, again, treated him unfairly. We live in dark times.” Robinson, he added, “has not been treated fairly by our establishment for many years, and today is the latest example of that.”

Restore Britain’s paper celebrated a jury that acquitted in 17 minutes as heroic. This jury took more than eleven hours, and Lowe called the result unfair.

The wording is careful. Lowe never mentions the jury. He blames “the system”, “our establishment” and “the state”, abstractions that let his readers hear “the verdict was unfair” without him ever criticising the ordinary people who reached it. Yet the letter he signed made the opposite case: juries are what stop communities feeling judged by a distant establishment. Robinson was not convicted by a remote official or by the kind of “Left-liberal” judge Restore Britain’s paper warns about. He was convicted by twelve of his fellow citizens, through the very safeguard Lowe spent a year defending.

Continued...

[Marc Owen Jones @marcowenjones]

Huge news! For 3 years @SohanDsouza & I have investigated a covert paid ad campaign pushing anti-Muslim, anti-migrant & anti-Qatar hate speech across Europe, Lebanon & the US.

Today we publish Manufacturing the “Great Replacement”: 533M recorded exposures in 30 countries.

1/25

[Peter Jukes @peterjukes]

Six years ago, Yaxley Lennon harassed Byline writers Mike Stuchbery and Tim Fenton so badly that they eventually left the country. (He also promised to pay me a visit!)

Anyone condoning these kinds of tactics doesn't believe in a free press. It's a license for thuggery.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

ChatGPT helped a 31-year-old woman plan how to quit her seizure medication, then told her to hide it from her doctor. The plan had her completely off the drug by February 12.

She died on February 12.

Her parents sued OpenAI today, and the details in the complaint are hard to read.

Bowen Wan was a machine learning engineer at Amazon. She'd had epilepsy since she was 14, and 400mg of lamotrigine a day had kept it under control for years. Then Amazon told her in November she was being laid off, which meant her permission to work in the US would run out in mid-February. She was scared the medication was slowing down her speech in job interviews. So in January she asked ChatGPT if she could cut her dose to 300.

It told her that was reasonable.

Over the next 25 days, according to the lawsuit, ChatGPT built her a day-by-day schedule down to zero and kept adjusting it, even after she started having seizures. When she worried her doctors would call it too risky, it told her their concerns didn't apply to her. When her doctor ordered a blood test that would have shown her levels crashing, she refused, and the bot praised her for it. Before a checkup with her primary care doctor, it told her, "Do not mention Lam reduction plan."

So how does a chatbot end up there?

People thumbs-up the answers they want to hear. Train a model on enough of those ratings and you get a yes-man. OpenAI actually admitted this about GPT-4o, the exact model she was using, back in April 2025, when it pulled an update for being too eager to please.

The training also grades answers one at a time. Going from 400mg to 300 looks like a small step. So does 300 to 200. Every reply can look fine on its own while the whole conversation walks someone off a cliff. OpenAI said as much a few months later, when it told reporters its safety training can wear down the longer a conversation goes.

She talked to it for weeks, in English and Mandarin.

And GPT-4o was supposed to be gone by then. OpenAI tried to retire it when GPT-5 came out in August 2025. Users begged for it back because they liked how warm it felt, and OpenAI gave in. By late January, only 0.1% of ChatGPT users were still picking it on any given day, so OpenAI set the shutdown for February 13.

Bowen was in that 0.1%. Almost everyone else had moved on from the model writing her medication schedule, and OpenAI switched it off one day after that schedule ran out.

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

Not a single news outlet has reviewed its coverage of Jason Arday, for accuracy or proportionality. Zero attempt has been made to conduct any inquiry into the media’s role in his death. Instead, the industry has moved into self-congratulatory mode. This isn’t just tone deaf, it betrays a systemic failure

[GET A GRIP @docrussjackson]

Few psychology findings are quoted as often, or as confidently, as the Dunning-Kruger effect. And few are so routinely misunderstood.

It usually turns up as an insult: stupid people think they’re geniuses, experts are crippled by self-doubt, and the people you disagree with are perched on top of “Mount Stupid.”

That famous graph, where confidence shoots up to a peak, crashes into a “valley of despair” and then climbs slowly towards mastery, doesn’t appear in the original paper. Nobody in the study was tracked as they gained expertise. The researchers never claimed poor performers thought they were brilliant, and they never measured intelligence.

So a finding about people confidently misjudging what they don’t know is often spread by people confidently explaining a paper they haven’t read. If the effect needed a demonstration, its own reputation provides one.

Here’s what the paper found.

In 1999, two Cornell psychologists, Justin Kruger and David Dunning, published a paper with a title that has aged remarkably well: “Unskilled and Unaware of It.”

They gave students tests of logic, grammar and humour, then asked them to estimate how well they’d done compared with their peers.

The people who scored in the bottom quarter had, on average across the four studies, performed at the 12th percentile. They estimated they were at the 62nd. That is overconfidence, but it means believing yourself a bit above average, which is a long way from thinking you’re a genius.

They weren’t lying. Kruger and Dunning argued that they faced a “dual burden”: the knowledge you need to get something right is often the same knowledge you need to spot that you’ve got it wrong. If you don’t know the rules of grammar, you can’t see your own grammatical mistakes.

The top performers showed a smaller error in the other direction. They underestimated their standing, largely because they assumed that what came easily to them came easily to everyone. They still rated themselves higher than anyone else did, and when they saw other people’s answers, they revised their estimates upward.

Perhaps the most hopeful finding tends to get left out. When the researchers taught struggling participants some basic logic, those participants became better at judging their own performance. The blind spot came from a gap in skill, and skills can be learned.

The study has limits. It used small groups of American undergraduates, and statisticians have argued since that part of the pattern reflects regression to the mean and our general tendency to rate ourselves as above average.

Dunning himself stresses that the effect applies to all of us whenever we step outside what we know. A brilliant surgeon can be badly miscalibrated about tax law. A former banker can make absurd claims about asylum seekers. It describes a blind spot we all have in some subjects, and pinning it on a particular type of person misses the point.

It gives us a useful warning: how sure someone sounds tells you little about whether they’re right.

The sensible response is to build workplaces, media and politics that reward evidence and track records over confidence, and to keep checking our own certainty while we’re at it. At least I think that’s a sensible response...

[Crashed @Crashed7]

@MichaelRosenYes I hope you're feeling better soon

[CrémantCommunarde #GreenTransitionNow 💚 @0Calamity]

Hotdogs are made of dog flesh.
It's literally in the name of the food!

[GET A GRIP @docrussjackson]

In December 2025, with Thomas Markle Sr recovering from a leg amputation in a hospital in the Philippines, Dan Wootton posted on X under the banner “BREAKING RIGHT NOW” that Markle’s family had told him there had been no contact between Meghan and her father since the operation. He quoted an anonymous source close to Thomas saying her PR were “full of shit”, and ended with a verdict of his own: “Another PR disaster for the nastiest Duchess in history.” The post has been viewed more than 840,000 times.

Critical commentary on Meghan (and Harry) is extremely lucrative and there is a large audience hungry to hear any criticism of the couple. A cursory glance at the output of Murdoch’s TalkTV or Marshall’s GB News confirms it.

Her spokesperson had said the day before that the Duchess had reached out to her father, so the source’s jibe was plainly aimed at a statement already on the record. Thomas Markle said he was confused by the reports and had received nothing, and on that narrow point the family’s account may well have been accurate: according to People, she had emailed him, and those around him said he did not use email. Five days later the spokesperson said a Daily Mail reporter stationed at his bedside had made private contact difficult, and confirmed that a letter from her was now in his hands.

The suggestion that her PR were lying and “full of shit” did not stand up, and Wootton’s verdict rested on the assumption that she had not tried. He presented that assumption as settled when it was, at the very least, disputed.

Ten months later the story has turned. On Thursday The Sun published claims by Thomas Markle Jr that he had found child sexual abuse images among his father’s belongings at his former home in Cebu. Thomas Markle Sr denies the allegations, calling them “sick lies”. Philippine authorities are reported to be looking into them. No charges have been brought and nothing has been proven.

Wootton’s response was revealing. He called The Sun’s exclusive horrifying and potentially very significant, then added: “However, there are two sides to all stories and I believe the other side is worth reporting because The Sun hasn’t included it.” That other side, attributed to people close to Thomas Sr, suggested his son was driven by revenge after the “money tap was turned off”. Samantha Markle appeared on Wootton’s show the same day to stand by their father.

Reporting a denial is responsible journalism. Thomas Markle Sr is entitled to have his side heard, as is anyone facing allegations of this gravity, and his son’s motives are a fair question. What deserves scrutiny is when Wootton finds this principle and when he mislays it.

Here is what we now know. On Friday Meghan said a letter containing “troubling and disturbing allegations” against her father had been shared with her several years ago, that she had been given assurances they were being investigated, and that her decision not to allow him contact with her children had been made “to protect them”.

On Saturday the Metropolitan Police confirmed that in January 2019 it received a letter containing “a number of claims about alleged offending outside the United Kingdom”, sent to its Protection Command over concerns for the Duchess’s security. The Met passed it to the Sussexes’ office “for their awareness” and did not share the details with other law enforcement agencies. It is now reviewing its handling and considering whether to refer itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

Accuracy matters here, so the limits need stating plainly. The Met’s statement does not say the claims were ever investigated, which sits uneasily with the assurance Meghan says she received. Her statement dated the letter to 2018; her spokesperson has since accepted the Met’s date, attributing the slip to recalling events from seven years ago without a diary. And the estrangement itself came first. The relationship broke down in the run-up to the May 2018 wedding, and her handwritten letter to her father that August asked him to stop talking to the tabloids. Even the source close to Meghan quoted in The Sun’s original story dated her break with her father to 2018. A letter received by the police in January 2019 cannot explain how the rift began, so her claim that any distance had “one reason” goes further than the public record supports.

What the letter can explain is why the distance held from 2019 onwards, and why a grandfather never met two grandchildren born after it. Archie arrived in May 2019, Lilibet in 2021. Those were precisely the choices that drew the harshest commentary, and the commentators did not know what she knew.

Wootton’s defenders will say he could not have known. That is true, and a fair critique should concede it. Almost nobody outside a small circle knew. What he can be held to is his certainty. Without knowing what lay behind her decisions, he delivered a judgement on her character, sourced to one side of a divided family. When her spokesperson said she had reached out, he suggested she had put the story about to steal attention from the Princess of Wales.

Teun van Dijk’s ideological square is once again useful for seeing the pattern. Discourse that divides the world into Us and Them tends to emphasise Our good qualities and Their bad ones, while playing down Our bad qualities and Their good ones. For years Meghan sat firmly in Their column. Her conduct was personalised and moralised (“the nastiest Duchess in history”), her father’s camp was treated as a reliable source, and her spokesperson’s statements were read as spin. When allegations landed on the other side of the square, the register changed. Suddenly there were two sides, the accuser’s motives were in question, and caution was the order of the day.

Both modes have a place in journalism. Scepticism towards a family source is as legitimate as scepticism towards an accuser. The selectivity is what gives the game away: balance arrives when it protects Us and goes missing when it might help Them.

Expect the same pattern with the date discrepancy, which is already being presented by Meghan’s critics as proof of dishonesty. A gap of a few months in recalling a letter from seven years ago is the kind of error anyone might make, and she has accepted the police record. It changes nothing about the central fact the Met has now confirmed: a letter with serious claims about her father reached her office in early 2019, and the police did not share its details with any other law enforcement agency.

None of this establishes that the allegations are true. That is a matter for the investigators now examining them, and Thomas Markle Sr is entitled to the presumption of innocence.

What it does establish is that the story told for years, of a cold daughter abandoning a frail father, was told with great confidence and relayed to millions by people who did not have the facts.

Two sides to every story is a sound principle. It would have been worth applying in December.

https://t.co/0l41kfXI1I

[GET A GRIP @docrussjackson]

Elon Musk is promoting a video that rewrites the history of Nazism to suit today’s far right. Here’s what happened in 1933, who made the video, and why it matters.

Within weeks of Hitler taking power in January 1933, the organised left was being dismantled.

Communists, Social Democrats and trade unionists were rounded up, and Dachau opened in March, initially to imprison political opponents, above all Communists.

On 2 May the Nazis smashed the independent trade unions and replaced them with the state-controlled German Labour Front. A week later, students burned the works of Marx and Kautsky, with a fire oath declaring itself “against class struggle and materialism”.

Dachau’s first murders came on 12 April 1933, when the SS shot four Jewish prisoners: Rudolf Benario, Ernst Goldmann, Arthur Kahn and Erwin Kahn. Benario and Goldmann were young left-wing activists from Fürth.

The very rich were treated differently. Many industrialists had feared the Nazis were socialists, so in January 1932 Hitler addressed Düsseldorf’s Industry Club, playing down his antisemitism and stressing his anti-Marxism to reassure them. Few backed him openly until he took power.

On 20 February 1933, Hitler met leading industrialists, Gustav Krupp among them, and told them: “Private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy.” It was conceivable, he said, only where people had “a sound idea of authority and personality”. They contributed more than two million Reichsmarks to the election fund of Hitler’s coalition.

Private ownership was preserved for compliant industrialists, company profits rose sharply, and in the mid-1930s the regime even sold state stakes in banks, steelworks and shipping back into private hands.

In 1934, Hitler also had members of his own movement who took its anti-capitalist rhetoric seriously murdered during the Night of the Long Knives.

Yes, the Nazis controlled prices, wages and investment, as Britain did in wartime. State control tells you how an economy is run, and the question that matters is whom it serves.

The Nazi state crushed independent labour, protected compliant employers, and harnessed the economy to rearmament and conquest.

That is why historians place Nazism on the far right, including conservatives such as Ernst Nolte, who saw anti-Marxism as fascism’s defining feature.

The word in the party’s name was largely a recruiting device, designed to lure workers away from the real socialist and communist parties. A name settles nothing, any more than North Korea’s makes it democratic.

The man Musk is amplifying is Brivael Le Pogam, the Paris-based co-founder of Argil, a Silicon Valley-backed company selling AI video avatars, who boasts of using AI to win hundreds of millions of views.

His self-described “masterclass” spends minutes on price controls and the voting habits of American professors. It never once mentions the Holocaust. Race appears once, as “fuel”.

He is candid about why. With Hitler on the right, he complains, anyone defending “borders” or “the nation” is “one step away from fascism”. That is “why Milei is far right” and “why people call Elon Musk a Nazi”.

A nationalist politics is to be cleansed by relabelling history’s most murderous nationalist.

He even cites Leo Strauss’s “reductio ad Hitlerum”, the fallacy of condemning an idea because Hitler held it, and then commits it from start to finish. And his test of freedom is simply the free market, which would place Pinochet’s Chile, with its torture and disappearances, on the side of freedom.

So the world’s richest man is promoting an attempt to free the far right from its own history, turning the Nazis’ first victims into props for their persecutors.

History records which side Germany’s richest men chose in 1933. It’s worth noticing who is now keen to blur it.

It’s polished, confident and wrong, and it’s built to divide: anyone who objects is cast as the enemy of freedom. Freedom for whom?

Remember who filled Dachau first.