After a turbulent few years, she is now hearing voices from the other side. Has the creator of This Country lost her mind?

• ‘I tried to get jiggy with a ghost’: read an exclusive extract from Daisy May Cooper’s new book

Daisy May Cooper is being haunted. Her first ghost sighting was two years ago – a disembodied pair of child’s legs, running around the bedroom of her new-build house. Then there was an invisible presence, tugging her duvet off her. She’s been hearing voices, too – a Spanish woman, and an ethereal voice in a hospital room offering words of comfort. “It’s like a veil has been lifted,” she says.

You sound crackers, I say. Not something I’d usually voice in an interview – but there’s an infectious, gossipy ease to being in Cooper’s company. “I do! Completely,” she sighs. Then she opens the door of the glass room we’re in, and shouts down the spiral stairs to the photo studio below for her partner to bring his phone up. She wants me to hear something.

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Tesla and SpaceX chief’s behavior sets him apart from even the most politically active billionaires – serving as a Trump policy adviser and mega-donor

Less than a month before the presidential election , Elon Musk has made himself a near-constant presence in the race. At a rally for Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, Musk jumps with glee wearing a custom black Maga hat. On social media, he posts AI-generated images attacking Kamala Harris . Behind the scenes, he bankrolls one of the largest pro-Trump political action committees.

The billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has emerged as a unique influence on the campaign in ways that set him apart from even the most politically active billionaires and tech elite. He is all at once a vocal Trump surrogate, campaign mega-donor, informal policy adviser, media influencer and prolific source of online disinformation. At the same time, he is the world’s richest man and the owner of one of the United States’ most influential social networks, while also operating as a government defense contractor and wielding power over critical satellite communications infrastructure.

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YouTube isn’t always a stupefaction engine. Curious children and other autodidacts have unrivalled access to knowledge

With highbrow content but defiantly low production values, the Numberphile YouTube channel might be considered the antithesis of the platform’s biggest successes. While stars such as the controversial MrBeast orchestrate elaborate stunts and giveaways, Numberphile videos feature mathematicians talking through complex concepts at length. There are occasional questions or prompts from the unseen cameraman. The props are usually a sheet of brown paper and a marker pen. The closest the episodes get to clickbait are titles such as Tau vs Pi Smackdown or The Lazy Way to Cut Pizza; a typical video is More on Bertrand’s Paradox, or An Amazing Thing About 276.

None of this sounds like catnip for young viewers. Yet since it launched in 2011, the series has become a cult hit. Eleven million people have now watched the physics professor Roger Bowley discuss Kaprekar’s Constant . The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and the London Mathematical Society have just awarded Numberphile’s creator, Brady Haran, the Zeeman medal for the communication of mathematics. As the citation notes, the channel has material for everyone from primary school kids to graduate students. It’s a fair bet that Numberphile – along with similar channels such as Stand-up Maths and 3Blue1Brown – has inspired at least some of the record 100,000-plus children who took maths A-level in England this year.

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London-listed Evoke, which owns William Hill, apologises for post on Israeli Facebook page linking to job ads

The gambling company that owns the William Hill, 888 and Mr Green brands has apologised after one of its social media accounts appeared to make light of the pager explosions in Lebanon that killed 12 people and injured thousands.

The explosions on Tuesday were followed by walkie-talkies exploding on Wednesday, killing another 20 people.

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Justice Alexandre de Moraes imposes $900,000 daily fine on banned social media platform in dispute with Elon Musk

In the latest round of the dispute between Elon Musk and Brazil’s top court, a senior judge has accused X of a “willful, illegal, and persistent” effort to circumvent a court-ordered block – and imposed a fine of R$5m ($921,676) for each day the social network remains online.

The social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which has been banned by court order since 30 August, on Wednesday became accessible to many users in Brazil after an update that used cloud services offered by third parties, such as Cloudflare, Fastly and Edgeuno.

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Report shows 23% increase in attacks on animals using weapons in 2023 compared with previous year

Rising rates of animal abuse in England and Wales are being fuelled by social media, with perpetrators sharing videos and photos of dead and injured wildlife and pets, animal welfare charities have warned.

Experts also raised concerns about the proliferation of other less extreme forms of online animal cruelty, such as taunting pets for “funny” reactions on TikTok and Instagram.

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It’s easy to blame viral videos – and far harder to change the culture in which they thrive

Among those swiftly convicted and sentenced last week for their part in the racist rioting was Bobby Shirbon , who had left his 18th birthday party at a bingo hall in Hartlepool to join the mob roaming the town’s streets, targeting houses thought to be occupied by asylum seekers. Shirbon was arrested for smashing windows and throwing bottles at police. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

In custody, Shirbon had claimed that his actions had been justified by their ubiquity: “It’s OK,” he told officers, “everyone else is doing it.” That has, of course, been a consistent claim from those caught up in mass thuggery down the years, but for many of the hundreds of people now facing significant prison sentences, the “defence” has a sharper resonance.

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The government needs to commission a proper inquiry into the origins of the past week’s unrest, and the role of the far right

Last Wednesday, businesses closed early and shops boarded up in anticipation of an outbreak of far-right violence in some parts of the country. Six thousand trained police officers were on standby to respond . In the end, it did not materialise on anything like the scale feared: relatively few agitators were dwarfed by huge crowds of anti-racist demonstrators sending a message that the far-right were not welcome in their communities .

That was a huge relief, but, as the prime minister warned on Friday, there is no room for complacency. With hindsight, the social media posts that claimed there would be action in many locations looked more like an attempt to instigate it than a sign of networked organisation. The prompt arrest of so many rioters in preceding days, with some already sentenced to long spells in prison, undoubtedly had a deterrent effect. But on Thursday and Friday nights, anti-immigration unrest continued in Belfast and the police remain on alert this weekend.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk

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