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Reposted by The Belligerent Optimist

The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

We've just deployed the latest version of our citizens' space policy platform. And it would be SO cool if folks could come and give it a go. Share your visions for the future and your priorities for the present + see how your vision lines up with others around the world. engage.celestialcommons.org

engage.celestialcommons.org

Citizens' Space Policy Initiative — CSPI 2026

Add your voice to the first global citizen survey on space policy.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Whether you think space is important or not, what's happening will affect all of us. Come and join in our citizens' policy initiaitve!

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

engage.celestialcommons.org

Citizens' Space Policy Initiative — CSPI 2026

Add your voice to the first global citizen survey on space policy.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

Tens of thousands of Iranians being slaughtered. Continued suffering for Gaza. Yet the world is fixated on America. This is not me diminishing anything. ICE is awful. But we need to get radically better at processing more if we want to actually mount a serious challenge to the avalanche of evil.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

With everyone saying "I didn't have xyz on my bingo card"... I decided to make one. I present - my 2026 bingo card.

- Several leading Russian and Chinese figures die of asphyxiation after excessive laughter
- “Americans will never act...” - Americans...not acting.
- Generative AI consumes so much energy it generates Alcubierre warp bubbles. AI data centres vanish in a “pop”, and take all the tech bros with them.
- Some kind of ‘Pacific Rim’ type shit.
- EU Leaders cave (again). Peace in our time. War in yours.
- Donald tries to buy...demands...INVADES (wtf?) Greenland (history blames Gerardus Mercator)
- Those Independence Day ships show up. The world collectively sighs “that makes sense”
- Everyone remembers Gaza again.
- Everyone forgets about Gaza again.
- My achillies still hurts
- “Just one more turn mom!” - Sam Altman re: AGI
- “Dead Economy Theory”
- ‘IT’ happens.
- NATO collapses (replaced by SUPER NATO)
- Europeans realise why US flag burning is so popular in other parts of the world.
- The New York Times rebrands as a local arts, culture and entertainment guide.
- The Metaverse actually takes off (I know right?)
- The vast majority of human suffering is ignored.
- New forms of human suffering are commodified.
- World War 3: Golden Thunderdome
- Extraterrestrial life is confirmed, but no one cares.
- Part of Greenland slides into the ocean and is gifted to Trump as the ‘Mobile Piece Prize’
- Taiwan is invaded by China.
- New Zealand is declared unable to defend itself and critical to Antarctic security. Offer to purchase includes a dowry of 9 rings.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

I wish the Total Perspective Vortex was a real thing.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Gotta wonder if this whole thing would just evaporate if someone showed trump a globe instead of a Mercator projection.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

Just think where we might be if everyone were just a tad less racist and a smidge less greedy.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

Trump won’t be judged like Hitler. And Republicans won’t be judged like Nazis. History will pick them apart as unique precisely because of their significance. But ordinary Americans on the other hand, will be judged like the Germans and treated with far less nuance.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

This song is etched into my memory from childhood. It’s always been relevant. And it sadly will continue to be for some time yet.

youtu.be

Patriot Game (Live at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY - March 17, 1963)

YouTube video by The Clancy Brothers - Topic

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

I'm not over the moon that I turned out right about all this 8 months before the orange dickhead won his first election. But I stand by the analogy.

A facebook post with the following text:

"Looking at the world and understanding people and processes, what poses a threat and what doesn't, the success or failure of movements, the expansion and collapse of ideas and organisations, how massive things can be disrupted by small things and how small things can become massive things as well as how people can be at once subject to enormous forces and a force unto themselves...all of that...requires - more than a passing knowledge of politics, economics and philosophy - a knowledge of physics and of cosmological processes. Society is a universe with as many dimensions as there are conceptual paradigms, all folded into one another. A mass of multidimensional interconnected universes.
So when someone says a leader will never amass power, or a person can never make a difference.
Just imagine how a cloud of gas turns into stars and planets, orbiting each other, feeding off of each other, ripping each other apart and reforming ad infinitum.
Instead of thinking about how many people are on side with Donald Trump right now. Think about Gravity."

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Hope is punk now. And being the eternal belligerent optimist I am, I guess that makes me cool. It took a while, but you were right all along Mum.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Age turns music from a parade of dreams to a procession of memories.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

This (what the emperor said), but unironically. I’m sick of folks buying into the images authoritarians have painted on the inside of our eyelids. Democracy is the engine of human freedom and one of the best damn ideas we’ve ever come up with. It just needs fixing.

thebelligerentoptimist.ghost.io

The 'Do Nothing' Democracy (and what to do about it)

Democracy has stalled. It lacks vision. It's consumed by feckless conflict. And it's starting to believe the bullshit authoritarians say about it. But we can fix it. We have the technology.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

So here’s my pitch. A late night show, with all the trimmings, but they just pull randoms off the street and introduce/treat them like they’re ‘important’ celebrities. We got a great show for you tonight. Josh is here! He waited tables for 3 years and now he’s starting an animal shelter!

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Just read that @nature.com is adopting transparent peer review across the board. www.nature.com/articles/d41... You folks should really look at using Stone - the free tool built explicitly for that purpose. Produces embedable records of review. www.writeinstone.com

writeinstone.com

Write In Stone

Research is valuable. Make it visible.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

Ok cool. Now take a page from the Arab Spring and do the same thing every week. Every. Week.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

“…from a kingdom of gold, to one of rust and iron…” - Cassius Dio

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

League of Nations ❌ United Nations ❌ ________________ ❔ United Federation of Planets ✅

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

After gen Alpha and Beta get the ball rolling, gen Stable Release will bring it home and save us all.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Good news everyone! Depressed about the erosion of civil rights, the collapse of democratic institutions, the rise of authoritarianism and the fecklessness of liberal society in the face of unspeakable human suffering? Apparently the cure is cardio. Convenient.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Functional brain network correlates of cardiorespiratory fitness and moderation by depression symptoms

Cardiorespiratory fitness may protect against or alleviate depression through neuroplastic mechanisms within disrupted brain networks underlying cognitive and affective symptoms. There is a scarcity o...

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

I’ve been saying from the beginning that the one silver lining to this shit show was going to be watching the Elon and Trump relationship implode. It was always inevitable and it’s going to be glorious watching them try and leverage their largely overlapping cults against each other.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

Brb. Running a highly uncoordinated psyop on myself to do better.

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Reposted by The Belligerent Optimist

Megapope 🇵🇸 @megapope.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

83% of NZers want to live in a functioning country it turns out ❤️

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

I know this might come across a little snide. That's not my intention. I just want to say that there are literally billions of people who deserve your sympathy. Most likely more than an ex president. Perhaps consider directing some of your outpourings their way.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

When the 20th and 21st century get a proper retrospective one day, Gaza will be remembered as the quintessence of our cobweb of failure. A terminally incomplete liberal project that cultivates fecklessness, political aneurysm and systemic injustice. Not just allowing evil but formalising it.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

The problem with our public intellectuals isn’t that they’re never right, it’s that they don’t publicly admit when they’re wrong. By ignoring or paving over the countless times and ways in which those voices given the most airtime have terrible takes, we fuel a culture of unaccountable error.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

A few weeks ago, I posted a few lessons I'd learned from experiences alongside democratic movements and under authoritarianism. I've since expanded on it, and hope it can offer those of you experiencing, processing and facing down threats to democracy a reason (or two) not to lose hope altogether.

thebelligerentoptimist.ghost.io

Notes From the Edge of Democracy

A few bits of belligerent optimism for anyone feeling the weight of (and perhaps even facing down) authoritarianism.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

“I think this is gonna be more like the renaissance than the Industrial Revolution” - Sam Altman

A robot couple with old fashioned styling including a top hat wave to a seated audience of robots - scene from the Animatrix: Second Renaissance

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Think globally. Buy locally. Act transdimensionally.

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Reposted by The Belligerent Optimist

Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 08/04/2025

Tariffs xkcd.com/3073

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Gee I wonder which economy will be able to pivot harder and faster to manufacture things locally. The country that has spent the last few decades building its industrial base or the country that has spent the last few decades dismantling it?

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

I’m afraid if you want the rest of the world to buy more of your shit you have to do one of two things. A) Have standards that make it not shit, which means regulation. B) Undercut prices, which means paying your workers next to nothing. Bonus option: AI automation and put everyone out of work.

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Reposted by The Belligerent Optimist

Senator Bernie Sanders @sanders.senate.gov · 02/04/2025

The Netanyahu government has killed 50,000 people in Gaza & wounded 112,000. Two weeks ago, they broke the ceasefire and have since killed 322 children & wounded 600. The US must end its complicity. Tomorrow, I will force votes to block $8.8 billion in arm sales to Netanyahu.

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Reposted by The Belligerent Optimist

Rabble @rabble.nz · 03/04/2025

According to one NZ economist the results of the Trump Tariffs is a big net negative for Americans and pretty decent positive boost for New Zealand. Thanks for the help Trump. #nzpol #nz #aotearoa www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-...

rnz.co.nz

New modelling reveals full impact of Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs – with the US hit hardest

Analysis - Previous tariff announcements by the Trump administration dropped sand into the cogs of international trade. The reciprocal tariffs throw a spanner into the works.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

What's the bet they just found a list of territories (not countries), slapped it in G-Sheets and just skipped merrily down the right column tapping in numbers that 'felt' right.

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The Belligerent Optimist @sharestuff.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Doing something awesome in politics? Submit it! Know people doing something awesome in politics? Nominate them!

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