HWFO Reading List, December 2024

And some thoughts about Trump's cabinet

HWFO opined in July of this year that Kamala Harris was in fact plenty qualified to be Vice President, compared to prior VPs, despite red tribe cries to the contrary. Now the blue tribe can’t seem to scream enough about Trump’s cabinet picks being unqualified. The problem again is a disagreement about the definition of “qualified.” I thought about putting an entire article together to highlight this point, but it’s too much effort and I don’t actually care that much to be honest, but it seems to me that Trump’s picks are infinitely qualified to do what Trump wants them to do. Let’s look at a few examples, and then run through a very belated reading list.

Tulsi Gabbard does not have a strong background in intelligence, but she does have a very strong personal motivation to root out corruption and politicization within the intelligence apparatus of the United States, because US intelligence was politically weaponized against her. A mere one day after criticizing Biden and Harris, they put her on a terror watchlist and used the the Quiet Skies program to follow her around. This gives her more motivation to find out exactly who did that to her than any “qualified” bureaucrat, which means she is more “qualified” for the job Trump wants her to do than any bureaucrat. That she suffered baseless “Russian Operative” slander for a decade after challenging Hillary’s Syria policy in the 2016 primary is really just icing.

RFK Jr. does not have a strong background in public health, but every person who does have that sort of background championed Covid lockdowns that caused the inflation, vaccine mandates that wouldn’t work, falsely called the lab-leak a “conspiracy theory,” falsely claimed the NIH never funded gain of function research at Wuhan, advocated for suspending the constitution in times of crisis, and is on Peter Daszak’s Christmas card list. I find some of RFK Jr.’s positions reasonable and some loony, but the only way to clean up the complete shitshow known as US public health is to throw a hand grenade into it, making RFK Jr. outstandingly “qualified” to do what Trump wants to do.

Even Gaetz as Attorney General follows this trend, despite him withdrawing. The (apparently?) true story of Gaetz is so wild it’s like Florida Man and Tiger King had a baby and put cocaine in its formula bottle. Extremely abridged, Gaetz’s father was being extorted by a former DOJ official to pay $25 million to fund a private military extraction team to get Bob Levinson, a former FBI guy turned CIA spook, out of an Iranian prison because Hillary and Biden wouldn’t do it, and the former DOJ official was using the sex investigation against Gaetz as a bludgeon, offering a Biden pardon to Gaetz if Gaetz’s dad allowed himself to be extorted. Did you follow that? That’s only a tenth of the story, follow the link. This makes Gaetz very motivated to find out exactly who did that to his dad, and therefore more “qualified” for the job Trump wanted him to do than any bureaucrat.

I don’t have the time or inclination to run down each of the picks and do a similar analysis, but I bet a lot more also fall into the “qualified by personal grudge” category than just these three. I do also think it’s important to point out that Nintendo 64 has computer based emulators, making it completely reasonable for all Americans to simulate the future Secretary of Education DDTing a bitch.

And if you’d like to find out which moves are best to use in the Secretary of Education Battle Royale, you can join the HWFO Slack Community by subscribing. If you’re already a paid subscriber and haven’t joined the Slack yet, keep an eye out and I’ll send an invite link in a few days.

Reading List

This is a small selection of the topics we’re discussing in the HWFO Slack Community.

Plugs

Open Source Defense, a group I write for and work with, is building a Second Amendment Venture Capital fund from the ground up. It’s been in the works a year now, we’re finally making moves, and the ad stuff is finally released. If you’ll be at SHOT Show this January and want to talk about it, reach out. Especially if you’re either (A) rich as fuck, or (B) you are attempting to develop a business in the gun space that is unique and interesting and not just another asshole shitting out AR lowers in his garage. Not that there’s anything wrong with shitting out AR lowers, I quite like that personally, that’s just not the sort of thing in which this fund will be investing. Follow OSD to find out what will be.

OSD 300: Open Source Defense Capital

Second, a plug for an acquaintance. This post is brainmelting. If you like it, buy his book. It’s like the post, plus illicit drug fiction.

Crime

Do increased prison sentences reduce crime? Yes. But the ROI is very questionable because prison is so expensive. A very long and detailed look at the mathematics and research:

Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

Are blacks more disproportionately stopped by police officers as compared to whites? Yes. Is this due to blacks breaking more traffic laws? Only slightly, but that does not explain the large discrepancy.

Are sex crimes against minors primarily perpetrated by transgenders? No. Are they primarily family members, friends, or teachers? Yes. Here’s a database.

Murder fell at the fastest rate ever recorded last year. The numbers are real, and any attempt to say they aren’t is debunked elsewhere on Jeff’s Substack.

Murder Fell At The Fastest Pace Ever Recorded In 2023

But while violent crime is trending noticeably down in the USA, disorder, such as homelessness, drug use, and shoplifting, seems to be up.

It's Time to Talk About America's Disorder Problem

Birth Rate Collapse

I will hopefully fully grasp the birth rate collapse before civilization ends from the birth rate collapse, and if I do I’ll write a complete HWFO article about it. But until then, the NBER did some research quantifying how much remote work increases birth rates, using the pandemic remote work trend as a marker.

This is a topic of great interest to me right now, and whenever I finally get around to summarizing it, the growth of urban vs rural life is going to play a large factor.

Collapsing fertility is not so mysterious

As will be the social castigation of women who choose to stay at home and raise children.

It's embarrassing to be a stay-at-home mom

And this is a bigger deal than people realize.

More.

More.

More.

Culture

A political trend has emerged, wherein the left are the tribe of the mentally ill, and the right are the tribe of the lower IQ. Psychos to the left of me, retards to the right.

Devon Eriksen, an emerging sci fi author who runs a very based twitter page, put together this rant which almost perfectly aligns with the HWFO position on religion. Doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, what matters is whether it’s effective. That rant perfectly aligns with this HWFO post from a while back:

Ever wondered why all the hipsters seem to adopt the same way to not conform? And then they jump to not-conforming in a different way all together? Isn’t that weird? Turns out there’s math for that.

If you can avoid ripping your eyes about regarding grammar, punctuation, and capitalization, then bad cattitude (intentionally not capitalized, see link) is a substack that posts very interesting stuff about 25% of the time. This one was a fun read.

the mediocrity downspiral

This was a great blog post about overfitting, Goodhart’s Law, and how efforts to increase efficiency make outcomes worse instead of better.

Health

Psilocybin (magic mushrooms) are a very effective depression cure, and their effects can last many months after one dose. This has been known within certain communities for a long time, but is now finally being studied, and they beat SSRIs on many metrics.

Women and men experience pain differently.

The “Ban Fluoride” thing is going to get big once RFK Jr. is confirmed. On the one hand, fluoride in certain concentrations makes you dumber and and a California judge just threw the weight of the legal system behind potentially banning it. On the other, there’s evidence that water fluoridation improves the teeth of poor people who don’t brush them, although it probably doesn’t help people who already brush their teeth.

Weird Science

Ever wanted to build a biological computer which can solve problems? There’s cellular engineering for that.

Computer modelers now have a complete description of the process an atom’s nucleus undergoes during “neck rupture,” the moment when the nucleus splits during fission.