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Simon Frankel Pratt

@simonpratt.bsky.social
3.1K followers 164 following 1.8K posts

Political scientist at the University of Melbourne. Formerly of other places. Research: war, intelligence, innovation, and normative change in international politics. Cat paparazzo. He/Him 🇨🇦🏳️‍🌈✡️

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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 19h
I suspect in absolute terms those numbers aren't very big.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
This is an extraordinary breach of security procedures. I cannot imagine what FlyDubai is gonna need to do to convince Israelis (and the UAE) that they are safe to fly.
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Doctor Charlton Cussans PhD @charltoncussans.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Jews could be and still are the victims of antisemitism regardless of their levels of oppression in the state and society in which they live(d).
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
It's not yet clear what happened and multiple accounts are inconsistent
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Avishay BSG (Ben-Sasson-Gordis) @avishaybsg.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The co-pilot seems to have tried to crash it into the ground with a full cabin of (mostly Israeli) civilians. Was stopped by his pilot that got stabbed in the process passengers interfered and another crew on the flight landed it in Saudi Arabia. Israel’s treating it as a terror attack for now.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I'm interested in the chain of events just to learn how passengers managed to storm into the cockpit in the middle of a dive. This seems like action movie stuff, and thank g-d for it
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Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
And here is a thread linking to articles that describe how, within the IDF, to-the-foundations earthmover demolitions became the norm in Gaza. It wasn’t because of orders from IDF high command, really—it was a highly successful bottom-up revolution by the extremist reservists who had the earthmovers
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Brooke Harrington @ebharrington.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
One of the things to come from GamerGate was the gamification of torturing real, live women...hounding them out of their homes, making them look over their shoulders for years. It was treated as a joke, nbd, the work of a few bad apples--as all terrorism against women is--& that failure leads here.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Artists lead the way, and reading between the lines it sounds as though he was courageous in so many ways
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
oy what a shame, may his memory be a blessing
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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
Wait what theconversation.com/the-worlds-2...
theconversation.com
The world’s 280 million electric bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars
Electric vehicles get all the press – but it’s the smaller unsung two wheelers cutting oil demand the most.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Now now, only the ones wealthy enough to buy pervert glasses
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This is true, but I do think there has long been more basis to mistrust Hamas on this versus the PLO, whose policy shift was more visible, better documented, and clearly linked to changes in institutions and diplomatic instruments.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This is pretty critical. In my opinion, there is really no realistic alternative to a 2SS beyond ethnic cleansing. Moreover, Israelis seem confident they will be the ones doing the cleansing but I think this confidence is misplaced in the longer term.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
She's been pretty, evidently problematic for years, but I feel as though it's mask off or maybe a descent into madness, recently.
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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 28/09/2026
1. These companies steal research. I don’t think there’s any other way to n out this. OpenAI and Anthropic use scientists’ own work against them to steal credit and short cut work with none of the hard conceptual development.
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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 28/09/2026
The important thing to know about the Starship launch today is that Elon Musk is directly responsible for an unfathomable number of people dying preventable deaths and has never faced a single consequence for it.
cnn.com
One year on from dismantling of USAID, study projects that global aid cuts could lead to 9.4 million deaths by 2030 | CNN
It’s been one year since the Trump administration dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID), with aid cuts leading to the closure of HIV clinics in South Africa, the termination o...
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Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Once again, I gotta say: you cannot treat anything you’re feeding into an AI as anonymous. There are enormous ethics implications for, e.g. referees who are clearly uploading others’ unpublished papers without consent, let alone health care professionals or law enforcement
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I must play this game
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This is broadly correct except for gamified day trading and, crucially, trading in speculative assets and their derivatives. The crypto era has massively increased the prominence of this second category.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
(image of bagpipes) 'continuous low pitch'
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The conceptzia ran deep.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This is very good. You've skewered the nexus that links antisemitism to other major conspiracy theories, and COVID denialism is one of the more motivating ones. I'm very sorry this happened to your shul/community and I hope things get better in Canada. Happy Sukkot, may it be joyful despite this.
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Michelle Cohen @docmcohen.medsky.social · 26/09/2026
It's been a rough week, and ranting is my therapy. I wrote about the seemingly COVID conspiracist-inspired shooting at my local synagogue and the simultaneous promoting of COVID conspiracism by Jesse Brown. medium.com/@michelle.co...
medium.com
Guns, Threats, and the Clown King of Jewish Safety
It’s been a bad week. It’s been a weird week. I awoke Monday to photos of bullet holes in the beautiful stained-glass windows of my local…
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I think this is a great question. I think it probably has to do with the comparative prominence of Marxists among UK elite feminists, but I'm sure there's more to the story.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This is a good question that I've thought a lot about myself. One of the answers I came up with is that Marxist materialism is far more significant in UK feminism. This strongly inclines UK (and Australian) elite feminists to think of gender in material terms as sex, reproduction, and body.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Pessimistic but not unrealistic
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Josie Glausiusz @josiegz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"I saw with my own eyes the military strikes against the university buildings. A video emerged showing the demolition of all of the university buildings, a complete leveling of the site." A day in the life of Mahmoud Seydam, university lecturer in Gaza. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
theguardian.com
‘First there’s the gruelling task of trying to charge my laptop’: a day in the life of a university lecturer in Gaza
As the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each tells the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the confl...
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Foreign student growth is down for a range of reasons, incl. that far fewer Chinese students study abroad. That bonanza was always going to be temporary, and it funded a lot of expansion in US/CA/UK/AU. But the tapering of that revenue is surely massively accelerated in the US by gov policy.
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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 24/09/2026
Wrote out some thoughts on those racist arcade games from the other week… I am not terribly thrilled with them.
joshuafoust.leaflet.pub
Gameful Propaganda Comes Home
About those racist Trump arcade games…
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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
We just dropped a bombshell investigation into ChatGPT's role in the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting. Incredible reporting from @markfollman.bsky.social that will have far-reaching effects...hopefully: www.motherjones.com/media/2026/0...
motherjones.com
ChatGPT helped the Tumbler Ridge school shooter focus on guns, tactics, and terror, our investigation reveals
OpenAI’s chatbot fed the shooter’s violent fantasies and planning up to the massacre.
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Michael Shurkin @michaelshurkin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The war has started in Ethiopia. This could easily become the worst human catastrophe of the century. I wrote this in February. The situation has become more complex, and more dangerous. shurkin.substack.com/p/the-loomin...
shurkin.substack.com
The Looming Disaster in the Horn of Africa: A Primer
A major war is imminent in East Africa.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
A few days ago in Belleville, in a small city between Toronto and Ottawa, a gunman came to the synagogue and Canada almost had its own Bondi massacre. A police officer paid with blood to save those inside. Antisemitism is an extreme threat and we cannot afford for it to be a political football.
cbc.ca
Synagogue shooting was deliberate hate attack: Belleville, Ont., police | CBC
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Avishay BSG (Ben-Sasson-Gordis) @avishaybsg.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This, like the rest of this poorly attended speech, is aimed at his domestic audience.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I don't think this is ever good for Jewish people and communities.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
this is quite the mistake
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This is a shocking number, and may rise to the level of an atrocity crime if many of these deportees have been subject to abuse or effective statelessness.
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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Would be interesting to know why Trump changed his mind. Article doesn’t say.
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Elise Thomas @elisethomas.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
If an individual did this, we'd treat it as a crime. We should treat this as a crime too, and hold OpenAI liable for what its models, under its supervision, did. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09...
abc.net.au
OpenAI agent hacked Medicare portal, PM says
Anthony Albanese says he has spoken to the Open AI chief executive to express his concern about the incident and the length of time it took the tech company to inform the government of the breach.
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Foreign Affairs @foreignaffairs.com · 24/09/2026
There are real parallels between the development of nuclear technology and the buildout of AI systems, but the atomic age “cannot provide a ready-made blueprint for the problem that AI poses,” write @claroche.bsky.social and @nktpnd.bsky.social.
foreignaffairs.com
The Trouble With the Nuclear-AI Analogy
In humanity’s quest to constrain the dangers from fast-advancing artificial intelligence, many have looked to the most revolutionary technology that preceded it: nuclear weapons.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
A reminder that the obliteration of Gaza triggers a range of secondary victimhood and risk, especially to women and girls.
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Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Reminds me of what my friend in Taiwan told me She wanted to take her two young kids to Taipei Pride (the biggest LGBTQ+ event in Asia); she Googled “where are the family events at Taipei Pride?” & the Google AI summary said “it is inappropriate to bring children to a Pride event” 🤬😤😡
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Nathan Ruser @nrg8000.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This shows the reality of Gaza in shocking resolution. I've scraped and exported all the imagery, totalling around 2.5 billion pixels at 13cm resolution, for safe keeping, in case they decide to take this imagery offline. If this happens, keep an eye out for access.
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Josie Glausiusz @josiegz.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
"My name is Ramadan Yaqoub Ghaban. I am 12 years old, from Beit Lahia. After breakfast, I go to work by the sea, at a cafe. I have not been to school since the beginning of the war, since the first day. I really loved reading. Arabic was my favourite subject." www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
theguardian.com
‘I’m afraid they’ll bomb the cafe where I work, or bomb me’: a day in the life of a 12-year-old boy in Gaza
Ramadan, 12, works in a cafe on the beach. He remembers enjoying school, playing and family barbecues before life became about survival
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Nathan Ruser @nrg8000.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
A BBC Verify investigation found that Apple Maps' censoring of Chinese Military and Government sites has included arbitrary detention sites in Xinjiang, including the prison where Ilham Tohti is detained. Watch the investigation.
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This is so nuts. There are people at my gym who don't seem to care either way if they get cauli, but actually messing up your ears on purpose I have never seen. Surely this is a very small trend.
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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I don’t know why, but something about the one-two punch here strikes me as morbidly hilarious in a cosmic sort of way.
An engineer on the Claude AI subreddit explains his frustrations with artificial intelligence’s impact on his job  Claude responds with the most AI summary to ever AI summary
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Avishay BSG (Ben-Sasson-Gordis) @avishaybsg.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
If media coverage of the Democratic Party is to be believed, the entire party has become pro-Palestinian and anti Israel. We decided to actually check if that’s true (it’s not) and think about how Israel could respond to the changing landscape. I’ll try sharing some findings later.
inss.org.il
Three Camps, One Party: Democrats And The Future Of U.S.-Israel Policy | INSS
Much attention in the global media has focused on the wave of victories of left-wing critics of Israel in the U.S. Democratic primaries. The victory of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan primary for a...
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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
From a note to a friend a couple of weeks ago "imo the reason text elemental is so good is because it captures the notion of something that is animate, but not conscious so much as an expression of the fundamental nature of the substance of which it is composed."
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Simon Frankel Pratt @simonpratt.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I remember how outrageous these were in 2019. They have only gotten worse.
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