Nick Nielsen
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geopolicraticus.bsky.social
Nick Nielsen
@geopolicraticus.bsky.social
One Man Think Tank
Friday 14 November 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 367
On the Suffering of the Biosphere
mailchi.mp/bbdbe7d14736...
…in which I discuss the relation of interest to survival, Schopenhauer, consciousness and adaptation, motivation, emotion, pain, suffering, misery, & bloodlands…
November 24, 2025 at 2:10 AM
Friday 07 November 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 366
A Thought Experiment of a Barren Universe
mailchi.mp/f5b9870f5f94...
…in which I discuss being alone in the universe, a sterile cosmos, searching for life, SETI, testing for scientific symmetry, and terraforming…
November 18, 2025 at 12:09 AM
Friday 31 October 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 365
Copernican Formulation of a Cosmological Anthropocene
mailchi.mp/60b69cb744bb...
…in which I discuss a strong formulation of cosmological standing, global synchronicity, formalized chronostratigraphy, and the good life…
November 15, 2025 at 9:26 AM
The Fall 2025 IBHA newsletter EMERGENCE is now available, with a new Frontiers column by me:

docs.google.com/presentation...

I've also posted it on Substack:

geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/a-place-fo...
November 12, 2025 at 9:10 AM
Friday 24 October 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 364
The Threshold of Cosmological Standing
mailchi.mp/286bba1e8a6a...
…in which I discuss locus standi, SETI, Ronald Bracewell, the galactic club, Bracewell probes, the cosmological and Copernican principles, and astrochemistry…
November 8, 2025 at 3:54 AM
Friday 17 October 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 363
The Human, All-Too-Human Scale of the Universe
mailchi.mp/4418b31f282e...
…in which I discuss Copernicanism, privileged observers, human peers, peer intelligence distribution, and Hoyle on the perfect cosmological principle…
November 3, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Friday 10 October 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 362
Do we live in an interesting universe?
mailchi.mp/40b1f7e81660...
…in which I discuss Freud on Weltanschauungen, peer complexity, meaning in history, Alexandre Koyré, a closed world, and a clockwork universe…
October 21, 2025 at 2:21 AM
Friday 03 October 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 361
Determinables and Non-Canonical Senses
mailchi.mp/2ec4ed7d3880...
…in which I discuss W. E. Johnson, determinables, properties of sense perception, generalizing sensory endowment, and determinables of determinables…
October 15, 2025 at 8:56 PM
Friday 26 September 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 360
Concept Formation and Spiritual Aspiration
mailchi.mp/311b6c33f93e...
…in which I discuss rigor, philosophy of science, intuitive formalism, secret gardens, Galilean science, and progress vs. purification…
October 7, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Friday 12 September 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 359
Technological and Engineering Ellipses
mailchi.mp/1f8020390c9e...
…in which I discuss soap, Ignaz Semmelweis, antiseptic procedures, ether, Valerius Cordus, surgery, Jürgen Thorwald, and the War Triptych of Otto Dix…
October 6, 2025 at 2:47 AM
Friday 12 September 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 358
The Epistemic Demands of Industrialization
mailchi.mp/a5f912e25183...
…in which I discuss a fundamental question of ethics, William Wundt, the end of life, Marx on feudalism, social capital, and the experience of travel…
October 4, 2025 at 5:47 PM
Friday 05 September 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 357
“What ought I to do with my life?”
mailchi.mp/bca69c0f3ea8...
…in which I discuss Kant’s three questions, the moral law, teleology in the Critique of Judgment, utilitarianism, doing good better, and purposive action…
September 27, 2025 at 2:06 AM
Friday 29 August 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 356
A Thought Experiment in Ancient Technology
mailchi.mp/1b22042bb877...
…in which I discuss idea diffusion, metallurgy, crucible steel, Hero’s steam turbine, bearings, Ulfberht swords, thermal airships, and aerial photography…
September 22, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Friday 22 August 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 355
On Knowing How to History
mailchi.mp/e8880623ba94...
…in which I discuss knowing that and knowing how, Gilbert Ryle, historical reenactment, moral panics, the witchcraze, Iris Murdoch, and past passions and enthusiasms…
September 5, 2025 at 5:53 AM
Friday 15 August 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 354
A Recapitulation Model of Cosmological History
mailchi.mp/1417e482f3fd...
…in which I discuss Polybius on historical cycles, Vico on ideal eternal history, Schopenhauer, the liberty of indifference, and recapitulation…
August 23, 2025 at 9:43 AM
Friday 08 August 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 353
How many Charlemagnes are there?
mailchi.mp/7a374499b78d...
…in which I discuss evolutionary convergence, the rare Earth hypothesis, cosmological-scale cyclical history, and a universe full of Caesars and Charlemagnes…
August 17, 2025 at 5:14 AM
Friday 01 August 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 352
The Role of the Ineffable in Science
mailchi.mp/e51e80471f35...
…in which I discuss Leonard Woolley, Digging Up the Past, a science of science, ineffable observations, and the gap between the knowable and the communicable…
August 8, 2025 at 10:44 AM
Friday 25 July 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 351
Addendum to the Chefbot Thought Experiment
mailchi.mp/5e1a586b3fef...
…in which I return to the Chefbot thought experiment, discussing abstract machines, classes of technologies, novel categories, and the symmetry hypothesis…
August 5, 2025 at 2:50 AM
Friday 18 July 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 350
The Chefbot Thought Experiment
mailchi.mp/cc3e3aaf999e...
…In which I formulate a thought experiment consisting of a cooking robot connected to a large language model, discuss novel ontologies, and consider the being of robots…
July 30, 2025 at 10:35 AM
Friday 11 July 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 349
Idealization in the Study of History and Civilization
mailchi.mp/1fdd68b64640...
…in which I discuss ideal histories and civilizations, perfection, properties of a simple pendulum, and Einstein’s photon box thought experiment…
July 26, 2025 at 6:14 AM
Friday 04 July 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 348
Clustering Below the Threshold of Automation
mailchi.mp/6e32f06ec7bc...
…in which I discuss electromechanical and “pure” technologies, diesel engines, Wankel engines, turbine cars, elevator control systems, and anonymization…
July 17, 2025 at 7:40 PM
Friday 27 June 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 347
Negating Nietzsche’s Three Kinds of History
mailchi.mp/7864b290f100...
…in which I discuss monumental, antiquarian, and critical history, Last Men, purposive movement, Ettinger on Heidegger and Arendt, and a finished paper…
July 17, 2025 at 4:51 AM
Friday 20 June 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 346
Making Excuses for Murderous Modernity
mailchi.mp/87216d91b41c...
…in which I discuss Karl Popper, open societies, Hannah Arendt, Isaian Berlin, tribalism, Dostoyevsky, A Passage to India, and Yourgrau on Gödel and Einstein…
July 6, 2025 at 3:26 AM
Friday 13 June 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 345
A Thought Experiment in De-Industrialization
mailchi.mp/72d830fc682f...
…in which I discuss the Morgenthau Plan, implicit research programs, how much big science can be replicated as bench science, and the STEM cycle…
July 2, 2025 at 8:30 PM
Friday 06 June 2025
Grand Strategy Newsletter
The View from Oregon – 344
Seriation and the Existential Principle
mailchi.mp/6428041d28bc...
…in which I discuss existence in time, seriation, unicorns, natural histories, the reconstruction thesis, observation time scales, and an addendum on thinking…
June 25, 2025 at 10:00 PM