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Posts by Simon Frankel Pratt

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British universities paid security firm to ‘spy’ on pro-Palestine students Investigation reveals how Horus, a company led by ex-military intelligence officials, was hired during protest movement.

Twelve British universities paid a private firm run by former military intelligence officials to “spy” on student protesters and academics, including those who have expressed solidarity with Palestine www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/...

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Are you awake at 3am only to share terrible aesthetic opinions? I will allow that your homemade sweet gefilte fish is probably very good because you're an excellent cook.

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sweet gefilte is vom

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Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020–2024: Decline, Fragmentation, and Enduring Polarization | Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media

Is social media dying? How much did Twitter change as it became X? Which party now dominates the conversation?

Using nationally representative ANES data from 2020 & 2024, I map how the U.S. social media landscape has changed

Here are the key take-aways 🧵

Full paper out now in in JQD:DM!

5 hours ago 293 135 6 24
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Trump Is Said to Be in Talks to Send Afghans Who Aided U.S. Forces to Congo

15 years ago, a friend and I were upset at the US reneging on promises to Afghan interpreters that we founded No One Left Behind, named in this piece, to advocate for their resettlement. I bring this up to say that this is only the latest in a long line of official betrayals of these people.

13 hours ago 46 23 2 2
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Open-mindedness was the strongest predictor of *rejecting* conspiracy theories in a sample of 46,745 participants in 68 nations

In particular, participants who were threatened by people who disagree with them were the most likely to believe conspiracy theories.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

5 days ago 112 43 0 6

The wildest part of articles like this (to me) is that they never consider that these tools don't have to "work" technologically in order to "work" as tools of oppression and fear.

Facial recognition and ICE databases are notoriously flawed, but still deployed and used to justify arrests.

13 hours ago 59 22 0 0
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I Know the SPLC’s Flaws Better Than Most. This Investigation Still Looks Like a Witch Hunt. MAGA has wanted to take down the SPLC for years. Now it has the DOJ to try.

"...it was almost inevitable that a weaponized DOJ would try something like this. Discrediting the SPLC is a way of retroactively rehabilitating everyone the SPLC ever exposed."

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At a certain point the material realities of supply and demand will shove aside the vibes-based bouncing around but by then it will be too late.

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Morally reprehensible and damaging to US interests. Why would anyone help us in the future?

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'We are told that for Mandelson's form, the vetting team ticked the red box - indicating an explicit recommendation not to approve vetting. But Robbins, who is still giving evidence, says he was never given that information.' bbc.co.uk/news/live/ce...

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‘We were terrified they were going to kill us’: fishers who survived US boat strike speak out An Ecuadorian fishing crew describe their ordeal as victims of Trump’s purported war on ‘narcoterrorists’

‘We were terrified they were going to kill us’: fishers who survived US boat strike speak out

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Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu share a lot of traits. They are both solipsistic, mendacious, narcissistic, and paranoid megalomaniacs who perceive themselves as victims of a cabal of elites. Now they share something else: They have lost a war together. Driven by vanity and hubris, the U.S. president and Israeli prime minister miscalculated Iran’s mettle, and now their mutually inflicted failure is causing them considerable political harm at home. What started as a Smith & Wesson partnership has degenerated into a Thelma & Louise ending.

"How many times has Netanyahu tried to dupe Trump?" @alonpinkas.bsky.social lists occasions Netanyahu duped Trump, starting with getting him to pull out of JCPOA in 2018. "In their infinite delusions of grandeur," both men have only hurt themselves and each other.
newrepublic.com/maz/article/...

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Front Page of L'Orient-Le Jour
Tuesday, April 21, 2026

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Infowars’ endless afterlife The Onion may finally boot Alex Jones from his studio, but years of damage have already been done.

NEW: How exactly has Alex Jones avoided paying the Sandy Hook families a single dime of what he owes? I wrote about it here, and spoke to Chris Mattei, an attorney for some of the families, and Lenny Pozner, the father of the youngest child who died at Sandy Hook: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

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They are just Shaheds!

They are just Shaheds!
A few days into the U.S.-Iran war, after Iran attacked many of its neighbors, my friend in Kyiv asked her 11-year-old son if he had heard about what was happening. Unworried, he replied they were firing " just Shaheds ," and continued playing his game. Ukrainians by now

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Canadian doctors obeying a U.S. executive order that doesn’t even apply to Canada is deeply offensive to both trans people and to Canadian legal sovereignty.

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ICE entered into another 1-year $12.2m contract for a system that looks a lot like surveillance tech based on advertising/app data, according to public records reported by The Lever.

The system/program, called 'SAFE HAVEN', aims to track, locate and profile migrants and 'extremists', among others.

1 day ago 9 7 2 1

Just came back from a workshop. It reinforced my “gut instinct” that so many of America’s problems are rooted in over-financialization.

The “big money” is increasingly made by extracting rents through informational, political, or legal arbitrage.

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Renewables are a structural hedge against fossil fuel shocks. In power markets, the more often wind, solar, hydro and nuclear cover demand, the fewer the hours in which gas sets the marginal price, and the weaker the link between global gas markets and domestic electricity costs.

2 days ago 31 14 1 0
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Amidst the churn in Iran, Ukraine has quietly been turning things around. My latest at The Bulwark.

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“Wall Street ensures the efficient allocation of capital.”

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Just horrifying to watch once excellent universities voluntarily destroying themselves.

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Seems to me that the European Commission should suspend the fine only if and when Hungary changes its asylum policy. Given Magyar's right-wing position on immigration, this is far from certain to happen.

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Two teenagers arrested over arson attack on synagogue in north-west London Boy, 17, and man, 19, detained as Met says it is investigating claims a series of antisemitic attacks are linked to Iran

“This is recruiting violence as a service, and the people who conduct that violence often have little or no allegiance to the cause and are taking quick cash for their crimes.”

2 days ago 108 38 1 3
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‘Everything is gone’: Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon Rights groups fear tactic of ‘domicide’ trialled in Gaza, where entire areas are made uninhabitable, is being used again

Three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Rights groups fear tactic of ‘domicide’ trialled in Gaza.

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

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In Iran, the regime has indeed changed: It’s less restrained, more hard-line After the U.S.-Israeli war’s “decapitation” strikes against top Islamic Republic political and military leaders, who is this new generation that has taken the reins in Iran? They are more hard-line th...

Well done, Netanyahu.

“…analysts say the decapitation campaign has, instead, enabled the rise of the most hard-line elements of the IRGC, which now feel freshly emboldened and less willing to compromise to end the war.”

www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle...

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Russian economy is faltering despite oil windfall, Sweden warns Stockholm’s military intelligence head says Moscow is manipulating data to make its economy look better

Exclusive: Sweden has intelligence indicating Russia's systematically manipulating data to fool Ukraine’s western allies into believing its economy has withstood the strain of its war spending & western sanctions, Thomas Nilsson, head of Sweden Military Intelligence, told me & @maxseddon.bsky.social

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just write any old nonsense just write words just start writing say any old shit fill the page up with half-baked rambling declare war on white space fight the antiblankpagejihad nothing is worse than nothing

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