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Fred Paulus

@surveilled.email
79 followers 275 following 216 posts

Non-binary dilettante. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

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Reposted by Fred Paulus
MAKS 26 👀🇺🇦 @maks23.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
🔥 Sochi. Claimed as Aframax Rio tanker was carrying crude oil from Novorossiysk to India and was almost fully loaded.
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Fred Paulus @surveilled.email · 06/10/2026
Interesting read on the different outcomes for German car companies in the face of Chinese competition. Decisions taken years ago now pay off or the exact opposite, but to what extent is this essentially luck? www.ft.com/content/5c71...
ft.com
As rivals cut back in Germany, BMW doubles down
Carmaker backs its home market with €2bn Munich investment
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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...
But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.
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Reposted by Fred Paulus
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 27/09/2026
The letter “O” from Joris Hoefnagel’s Guide to the Construction of Letters (1595), a work designed to aid and inspire calligraphers. Each letter is surrounded by an array of symbolically charged motifs. publicdomainreview.tumblr.com/post/8289396...
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Matunos @matunos.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
All of this
As you ride the train, at each progressively more indefensible stop, you'll be told it's the last one. But it won't be.
Labour thinks moving to the right on social issues takes them "off the table." And this is at the heart of the centrist con:
You can do this, they say, and still be a good person. You'll make a few compromises, but you'll "remain supportive," and trans people will continue to be "protected," as Jon Cowan and Seth Moulton respectively put it.What will actually happen is you'll do horrific things while delusionally maintaining the fiction of yourself as a good person. Labourites have not carefully balanced rights, they have not made an ugly compromise to defeat the fascist threat, or even cynically cemented their own hold on power. They have, in fact, just viciously attacked the rights, safety, and dignity of a minority
group. And for the right, it will never, ever, ever be enough.
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Fred Paulus @surveilled.email · 21/09/2026
Very interesting thesis. It's always seemed to me that the verve for Haidt's position and the policies it inspired had more to do with politics than scientific merit, it's good to see some opposing arguments.
theverge.com
What if social media isn’t hurting kids?
Psychology researcher Peter Gray accuses his ex-colleague of stoking a moral panic.
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Reposted by Fred Paulus
Thorne 🌸 - Play Cozysters! @ens0.me · 17/09/2026
"transgender ideology" is a phrase that should be treated with the same revulsion as "woke mind virus"
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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I miss the old days when a disgruntled noble in a dispute with the crown would just spent a few years sulking in the Low Countries before landing at a fishing village in the south west with some Flemish mercenaries and heading for the Welsh Marches to raise his banner. Much more dignified.
bbc.co.uk
Earl Spencer defends Diana book claims about King Charles
Princess Diana's brother tells the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg that "we'll forget her soon enough" were "exactly" the words used by the then-Prince of Wales.
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Simon @intruth.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
No matter how you answer “the better of two sci fi franchises” in this NYT crossword, the other clues still work. Even more diabolical, if you give Star Trek as the answer, 71 down is the Star Wars answer.
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Fred Paulus @surveilled.email · 17/09/2026
The economics around AI are shifting fast.
arstechnica.com
Exclusive: Paying for frontier AI models buys 4-month head start at 5x the cost
Ars previewed Mozilla’s report on how cheap open models caught up on capability.
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Fred Paulus @surveilled.email · 14/09/2026
Interesting utopian take on AI, very unlikely to happen though, it seems to me.
ft.com
Joseph Stiglitz’s ‘progressive AI agenda’ for the economy
A slow rollout will disappoint investors. A fast one risks undermining the industry’s own foundations. But managed carefully, this technology could benefit us all
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🎃 Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026
The international chess Federation banned trans women from playing women's chess. CHESS. It's not about fairness. The fairness argument is intended to radicalize people into more violent forms of transphobia.
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Fred Paulus @surveilled.email · 11/09/2026
Interesting employment stats:
ft.com
On Europe’s economy, let’s ditch the lazy stereotypes
Despite careful, consistent labour market reforms, the continent has not lived down to its image as work-shy
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Night of the Living Red Durkin @daedsider.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Periodic reminder that your "concerns" about trans people are being beamed directly into your head by a small cadre of incredibly rich psychopaths.
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Fred Paulus @surveilled.email · 31/08/2026
The US seems to be becoming more dystopian every day…
theverge.com
Americans are cheering for vigilantes who take down Flock cameras
The surveillance cameras have become another flashpoint of growing bipartisan anger against tech industry excess.
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cats of darkness (2x) @jordandarkly.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
"the point of fiction is to put oneself in the shoes of a character. if that character is different than oneself, it may cause empathy. this is not a fatal flaw as long as there is lesbian sex."
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Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Settlements are pure business decisions. If Meta was willing to pay $18 billion, imagine how guilty they must’ve been, how big they feared the real damages would be, and how insanely profitable it was to do this wrong in the first place.
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David Simon @audacityofdespair.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Assume away. You will not be wrong. With regard to humanity, men are generally the biggest shitheads that nature and nurture could possibly construct. In all respects, women -- whether birthed as such or transitioned as such -- are moderately better.
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Fred Paulus @surveilled.email · 24/08/2026
The Economist's critique of Acemoglu's work is laughable: In his response Acemoglu sounds bemused that it is so bad: www.economist.com/letters/202... It illustrates the Economist's drift over the last twenty years well, from sharp insights and arguments to overly simplistic and ideological.
economist.com
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Micah @rincewind.run · 21/08/2026
the post-covid revolt of the bosses is the biggest factor in the absolute collapse of public support for tech we had a brief window of genuine worker power and they hated it and their primary goal with AI has been to break the workforce so they never have to deal with it again
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Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
LOL remember Web3?
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Fred Paulus @surveilled.email · 21/08/2026
Excellent thread that exposes many of the fallacies underpinning the neoliberal ideology, for example, the idea that people are perfectly informed. AI in its current guise is a neat continuation of the direction of travel of the last fifty years.
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Matthew Sheffield @matthew.flux.community · 19/08/2026
🧵You can't talk about Natalie Harp w/o talking about how strange she is. This isn't making fun of physique or bearing. It's about obsessive/creepy behavior. And it matters on policy. As a former Republican media consultant, I can tell you that this attack is astonishingly effective w/the public...
A photo of Donald Trump sitting at a desk with national flags on it, seemingly at a meeting in an office. His omnipresent aide, Natalie Harp, is sitting behind him, staring at him with an unnatural smile, her eyes shrouded with pupils not visible.
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Guy Berger @econberger.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Fwiw my big picture takeaway from this isn’t “AI won’t affect the labor market” or “software developer employment is immune to AI” but rather that you should: (1) be intensely skeptical of high confidence predictions (2) discount predictions of near-term radical change
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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
In 1924, the son of the president of the United States, with access to the best medical treatment, got a blister on his foot playing tennis, it got infected, there were no antibiotics, and he died of sepsis.
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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
A reminder: Anyone who ever complained about wokeness is a bullshit artist and should not be listened to in any context.
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 13/08/2026
Elon Musk needs to spend the rest of his life in a prison cell.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
I think part of the pundit crack-up has been that they missed the big call of their lifetimes about which was the bigger threat to America: wokeness or authoritarianism. And rather than admitting that, they are doubling down on wokeness, while ignoring an authoritarianism that does not threaten them
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Fred Paulus @surveilled.email · 12/08/2026
This AI-deceiving font is perhaps more interesting for the optical illusion than the AI angle. I wonder if it will catch on, even if briefly.
dezeen.com
Decoy Font protects messages from being read by AI
One message for humans and another for artificial intelligence is contained in the letters of Decoy Font, made by the company Mixfont for those who want to avoid having their data scraped.
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Fred Paulus @surveilled.email · 09/08/2026
This uncompromising essay is one of the first I remember to clearly situate the AI juggernaut in terms of power dynamics, and highlights how AI could facilitate authoritarian rule.
theguardian.com
‘I hate what AI is doing to the minds and happiness of the young’: Katherine Rundell on the view from the classroom
Education is at a crossroads, argues the author and academic. Should we embrace new technology in the name of efficiency, or is it time to fight back?
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Fred Paulus @surveilled.email · 08/08/2026
This "work vs gym" analogy to decide when to use AI and when not has been making the rounds, and indeed it's a useful framework.
schneier.com
Should You Use AI for a Task? Here’s a Simple Way to Decide - Schneier on Security
This essay originally appeared in The Guardian. I teach public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Munk School at the University of Toronto. And it will come as no surprise to you that my students regularly use AI to complete their writing assignments. Doing so is a waste of their tuition money. But if their entire career is going to include AI writing assistants, why shouldn’t they embrace their future? The best way I’ve found to explain the dilemma comes from the AI researcher Daniel Meissler: it’s the difference between work and the gym...
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Reposted by Fred Paulus
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 07/08/2026
Trump takes a break from fear-mongering about communism to brag about seizing the means of production: "We had a problem with Intel. And we settled the problem. They gave us 10% of the company. That was worth $12 billion."
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Django Wexler @djangowexler.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Somehow things that would have been a background gag in a Verhoeven movie are now just real
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 01/08/2026
Neoclassical econ assumes rationality. The corollary of, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" is "you're rich, so you must be very smart!" Thus, people assume that if powerful, well-compensated CEOs insist that "AI is changing everything," well then, *AI must be changing everything*. 1/
A sepia-toned 1950s era boardroom in which men in suits sit around a circular table. The chair of the meeting has been replaced with a man in a straitjacket, making a funny face. The heads of the remaining board-members have been replaced with robots from 1930s pulp magazines. The image has been hand-tinted.
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sam ! @sam.robotsfightingdinosaurs.com · 03/08/2026
a $20 boot lasts a month but a $200 boot lasts 50 years but the company that makes the $200 boot got bought out by private equity and changed factories to the same one that makes the $20 boot so now it only lasts a year but another company bought the original factory and is selling boots for $400
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Talia "ATTACK DOGS is out now!" Bhatt ⚢ @taliabhatt.itch.io · 09/07/2026
One of the things about modern transmisogyny is that it gave right-wing regimes an avenue through which they institutionally recuperate feminism while actively eroding the rights of women and queer people, openly trialing new anti-gay marriage arguments and reifying womanhood as reproductive.
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Chris McKeon @cjmckeon.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Today's best bit of news from Nato - Erdogan gave the other leaders each a revolver engraved with their name and a box of live rounds. But Starmer has had to leave his in Turkey to be decommissioned because, while Erdogan gave him a note waiving export controls, it's illegal to import into the UK.
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William Adler @williamadler78.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
There are like 4 of these people and they all sound exactly the same and they've all received a soft-focus sympathetic story in the New York Times www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/u...
nytimes.com
A Conservative Role Model for Ending the Fertility Crisis
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Adam Keiper @adamkeiper.com · 08/07/2026
On the one hand, I don't know that Rutte, given his job, could have said anything different here, as spineless and cowardly as this makes him seem. On the other hand: Kudos to the reporter who asked this the-emperor-has-no-clothes-and-is-also-batshit-crazy question.
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Fred Paulus @surveilled.email · 08/07/2026
Fascinating study design and interesting conclusions. I'm sure that the sort that worries about the "great replacement" will welcome them with an open mind…
publiccomment.blog
If You Want to Raise Birthrates, You Need to Fix Men
New evidence that patriarchy plus economic growth leads to declining birthrates
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Fred Paulus @surveilled.email · 08/07/2026
Interesting analysis:
programmablemutter.com
AI Isn't Management. Try Explaining That to Matthew Prince
At last we have created the Corporation That Eliminates Middle Managers from classic management text Don't Eliminate the Middle Managers!
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QueerAF @wearequeeraf.com · 07/07/2026
ICYMI: The decision to ban social media could have unintended consequences for LGBTQIA+ young people, who often use social media to find community, support and safety.
wearequeeraf.com
Youth social media bans should raise privacy concerns for everyone
TL;DR: The UK Government has announced a sweeping under-16s social media ban, which could have implications for privacy rights for everyone. The UK government has announced a sweeping ban on children under the age of 16 accessing social media. This landmark decision – in what is already a highly
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Lee Hurley @hleehurley.com · 06/07/2026
Folarin Balogun joined Arsenal in 2009, when he was 8. He left in 2023, just before his 22nd birthday. That was also the year he switched allegiances to play for the US. He is American because his mum wasn't allowed on a flight home when seven months pregnant and on holiday from London.
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Daily Cannon @dailycannon.com · 05/07/2026
Already seeing people sharing an AI picture of Trump and Infantino kissing and this is your reminder that you don't have to be homophobic to express your displeasure at the corruption of straight men.
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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
"Members of the group Patriot Front ride the metro as a commuter looks on, during the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 4, 2026. REUTERS/Cheney Orr"
"Members of the group Patriot Front ride the metro as a commuter looks on, during the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 4, 2026. REUTERS/Cheney Orr"
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Evan Urquhart @evanurquhart.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
It's not appropriate for cis people to say that trans people are too alarmed, or that certain trans writers are irresponsibly causing trans people to think the sky is falling. I want to take some time in this 🧵 to write personally about how my skies have fallen.
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ArtButMakeItSports @artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Black Watch Series III, by Gene Davis, 1974
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ArtButMakeItSports @artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Composition (Petit univers), by Joan Miró, 1933, 📸 by @morgantencza.bsky.social for @fortyonemag.com
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