simnett

@Bazza315 @docrussjackson @Jim_Cornelius @X The Richard E Grant in the Player “no stars” energy is strong with the no mainstream press “choice”

@docrussjackson @Jim_Cornelius @X I often wondered how students who weren't white, heterosexual, males fared under him at the University of Kent. He is very thin skinned. I got blocked by him for reposting a review in Private Eye of one of his books.

The most substantive early criticism of Matt Goodwin’s new book, Suicide of a Nation, comes from journalist Andy Twelves, whose detailed @X thread examines the first five chapters and raises specific, evidence-based concerns about the book’s claims, rigour, and reliability. Twelves highlights multiple signs of poor sourcing and questionable scholarship. Some footnotes reportedly include unedited URLs with tracking parameters such as “utm_source=chatgpt.com,” raising concerns that material may have been copied from AI-generated outputs without proper verification. More seriously, several quotations attributed to figures including Cicero, Hayek, Burnham, Connor, and Scruton are said to be inaccurate, misattributed, or untraceable. In some cases, the wording closely resembles AI-style summaries rather than original texts. Twelves also identifies clear factual errors and weak evidentiary standards. These include describing Boris Johnson as being in opposition in 2019, and citing a Bradford classroom anecdote that appears to have no verifiable source. Data on pupil language is presented selectively, without the broader context available in Department for Education and Ofsted reporting. Taken together, these examples point to a broader pattern: the use of decontextualised, cherry-picked, or weakly supported evidence to make sweeping and often speculative generalisations. Something Goodwin has been doing in his substack, tweets, and in right-wing newspapers for several years. The overall framing leans heavily on narratives of civilisational decline, with a tendency to present immigration and, increasingly, Muslims and Islam in reductive and negative terms. This sensationalist framing is reinforced by the book’s title, Suicide of a Nation, which echoes the language of “suicidal empathy” associated with Gad Saad. Saad, an attention-seeking marketing professor favoured by Elon Musk, presents this as a form of pathological altruism or a “mind parasite,” but critics argue that it functions more as a culture-war slogan than a serious analytical concept. It is often tied to anti-immigration or hard-right narratives, including ideas about demographic threat, and risks pathologising empathy itself rather than engaging seriously with policy trade-offs. More broadly, both Saad and Goodwin are criticised for relying on selective evidence, confirmation bias, and polarising rhetorically charged generalisations rather than careful, balanced analysis. Critics argue that their work prioritises provocation and culture-war framing over intellectual rigour, particularly in their treatment of Islam and Muslims, where complexity is often flattened into narratives of threat and incompatibility. Questions also arise around Goodwin’s stance on free speech. While he presents himself as a defender of open debate, his responses to criticism are often defensive and combative. He frequently dismisses critics rather than engaging with their arguments, sometimes framing disagreement in moral or psychological terms instead of addressing the substance. His response to Twelves is a case in point. Rather than engaging with the specific and entirely legitimate claims about errors, misattributed quotations, and weak sourcing, Goodwin dismisses the critique as a “lefty meltdown” and suggests it reflects coordinated attacks or misrepresentation. Always the victim, he insists his arguments are backed by official statistics, but does not directly address the detailed issues raised. This pattern of response matters. When a former academic author is presented with specific, evidence-backed criticism, the expectation is clear: address the claims, correct any errors, and defend the work with evidence. Simply dismissing critics while amplifying the same arguments on platforms like GB News, where he joined fellow Reform UK presenters Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson, gives the impression of evasion rather than rebuttal. The result is a clear imbalance: detailed, documented criticism on one side, and a response that relies largely on dismissal and deflection on the other. For a book making such sweeping claims about national decline, that is a serious problem. For a book about national “suicide,” the more immediate concern may be the self-inflicted damage to basic academic standards in his own work.

@Gizmodo Nah- someone will steal it again before then….

What Will 'The Scream' Look Like in 300 Years? This Tool Simulates Its Future gizmodo.com/what-will-the-…

@TheEconomist Rejoining the EU would be a good start tbh

“I have today fired the starting gun of where we want to go next, and that is closer alignment.” Rachel Reeves has given the clearest indication of the scope of the government’s new ambition for post-Brexit Britain economist.com/britain/2026/0…

@DioOmega @EvanKirstel WW1 and 2 aviation are great examples of wars pushing innovation.

Asymmetry is not limited to the battlefield. Physics and design patterns refined under military constraints steadily propagate into civilian systems and reshape their foundations.

@berkie1 Half the people in that bastion of market driven free enterprise, Hong Kong, live in public, subsidized/ regulated housing, for example.

@berkie1 Not wrong today, but… Electricity and water prices are regulated. The failure is systemic, if you assume housing is a societal need it’s not obvious that the supplier of last resort should be a rent maximizer.

"There is now unambiguous, solid economic evidence, not just abstract economic theory, that rent control would make the affordability problems facing [Massachusetts] worse, not better." - Jon Gruber, Chairman of the Economics Department at MIT

@asferrisicansee @berkie1 Cod is up $2 a pound if that’s what you are asking.

@simnett @berkie1 None of these sentences are relevant

@Mayoisspicyy Your terms are acceptable?

I keep trying to post that Trump needs to be impeached and it keeps autocorrecting the word "impaled".

@OleTimeHardball The left arm of God.

Your are the USA mgr. and have your choice of any Starting Pitcher, of any era, in his prime for the WBC Championship game . Who gets the nod?

@Matt_Pinner I see a cat

If you're right-brained, you'll see a teacup. If you're left-brained, you'll see a fortune cookie.

@AlTheBoss03 Dodgers stadium. 6 years old. We beat the cubs.

How old were you when you attended your first MLB game? ⚾ What stadium was it at? Bonus: Do you remember who played? Let’s hear those first-ballpark memories.

@LindaGarbutt8 @travelingflying It’s simply a lie anyway. The mods and rockers were tooled up. Knife crime was a huge issue in the 50s and 60s

@travelingflying London in 1960, smaller population, different crime recording, different policing, different drugs markets, different urban density. ‘Different people’ isn’t a serious explanation.

Piers Morgan: ”Everyone in England used to have guns, now very few people have. And the consequence of that, we have almost 0 gun crimes.” Tucker Carlson: ”Oh, is London safe now!? 😂” Piers Morgan: ”Now we have a knife crime epidemic.” Tucker Carlson: ”No, you have a people problem. It’s measurable. How many people got stabbed or shot in London in the ’70s? It’s a massive increase. The attitudes and actions of the people are totally different; you’ve got different people.” Yes. Here are figures for London, UK: 1960 98% White 0.01 Knife crime per 1,000 2025 36% White 1.82 Knife crime per 1,000

@Math_files @Travis_Sawchik Not true. duplication (cousins marrying) could easy cut this number by 70-80% over this many generations

In order to be born, you needed: 2 parents 4 grandparents 8 great-grandparents 16 second great-grandparents 32 third great-grandparents 64 fourth great-grandparents 128 fifth great-grandparents 256 sixth great-grandparents 512 seventh great-grandparents 1,024 eighth great grandparents 2,048 ninth great-grandparents For you to be born today from 12 previous generations, you needed a total of 4,094 ancestors over the last 400 years. Think for a moment: How many struggles? How many battles? How many difficulties? How much sadness? How much happiness? How many love stories? How many expressions of hope for the future? – did your ancestors have to undergo for you to exist in this present moment...

@leashless Survivor bias is a wonderful thing…

So the dumb people who get lucky outperform the smart people who balance risk, but the dumb people who fail because they committed to the wrong strategy are invisible. That’s what’s really going on.

The real issue is this: * dumb people pick one strategy from a handful of choices and if it fails, they fail — the losers then work for the winners in the next round * smart people build a portfolio of strategies and try and execute them all to balance risk knowing one can fail

@TheEconomist So all that investing into GREAT Britain from 1990-2010 was materially driven by GB’s position as best place *within EU* to set up?

The economic gap between Britain and the EU was never as wide as politicians claimed, and it has since disappeared, partly because Brexit has crimped trade and investment in Britain economist.com/britain/2026/0…

@johnloeber People didn’t do those things anything like as much as today.

Before the ~1980s, there was no portable music player. You’d go running, rowing, cycling, whatever, for hours on end, in total silence, no sound other than your own thoughts. How did they do it? We will never know

@oelma__ Yep

Hahaha Did you do this?

@StockwatchUK @BenGrahamStocks Cod has gone up 2 pounds a pound, if that’s what you are asking.

@simnett @BenGrahamStocks The Forties field prompted an early 70s book / thinkings on what the population would do with the cash…. 4 day weeks etc was a thought, leisure time…. as the projections of cashflow were huge!! .. like many plans events occur( ME oil hike)

Margaret Thatcher sold off the North Sea, Instead of building a sovereign wealth fund like Norges Bank Investment Management for Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global. Today Norway sits on a $1.5 trillion fund. Britain sits on immense debt. One country invested its natural wealth. The other liquidated parts of it.

@brownsonjacob2 The expected run posters should consider the man on third case. Giving up an out to get a man in from third, with no outs, is also negative ER…

Random thought of the day. It doesn’t sit right with me that you don’t get an RBI if the runner scores from 3rd on a double play with no outs. You still batted them in.

@StockwatchUK @BenGrahamStocks Hum… North Sea oil revenue was de minimus until 1979?

Firstly, Much of the NS money went on paying the miners in the70s, by Labour’s Wilson government, then Callaghan later on trying to remain in power. Thatcher sold assets to pay for the restructuring that was badly needed. BP was best in private hands. As was Britain , Jaguar, Amersham and Pickfords…. There was no spare money. Socialist government gave pay rises, Tories likes tax cuts ( helped the economy ) ….both f’ed up.