Top all-time · #2638
BJ Campbell
Personal blog · hwfo.substack.comculturescience
BJ Campbell's personal blog at hwfo.substack.com covers culture and science. Since 2021, 29 different Hacker News readers have linked it 43 times, most often “An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (23) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link BJ Campbell's Substack for data-driven posts on gun ownership and homicide, abortion law comparisons, the gender wage gap, climate, plastics and preparedness. A few commenters call specific posts a good read.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 23 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
This is a song about culture wars, futurism, apocalypta, and gun math.
Most-linked posts?
- /p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2021-02-22
- An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-09-27
- A New Unit of Measure for Civil Unrest2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-29
- /p/talkin-about-hunga-tonga2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-09-11
- Burn the Universities and Salt the Earth2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-12-20
- Nuclear Power and Hot Air Balloons2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-08-20
What Hacker News says?
Most of the USA will still have more permissive abortion laws than Europe even after the removal of Roe v. Wade. [0] Most of the EU restricts abortion after 12 weeks - which is what the law at issue in this case does . 0: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/us-europe-abortion-law-compariso...
Comment linking /p/us-europe-abortion-law-comparisons
on “Supreme Court Overturns Roe vs. Wade”Submitted An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021) as a story · 397 points
HN discussion> You just give them the fucking food, education, and healthcare. Look at the current US military budget and tell me that's impossible. It’s impossible. Here is some analysis: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/peace-in-ukraine-and-universal-h...
Comment linking /p/peace-in-ukraine-and-universal-healthcare?s=r
on “Why I'm in the Army Reserve – an explainer for my friends in tech”Submitted Want a Vaccine? Elect a Nationalist as a story · 17 points
HN discussion> The gap is still 7% overall. Pure fiction, which is why nobody can present a credible analysis to support it. Try this instead: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/graphing-the-gender-wage-gap?s=r
Comment linking /p/graphing-the-gender-wage-gap?s=r
on “Young women earn more than young men in several U.S. cities”Submitted Burn the Universities and Salt the Earth as a story · 9 points
HN discussionFor gun murder , it could actually be a small negative correlation. https://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-... Statistics, of course, are often made to include all gun deaths, and it would also be interesting to see whether the overall rate of of suicide is affected by levels of gun ownership.
Comment linking /p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between
on “New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity”Submitted Nuclear Power and 526 Deer:Compare Land-use foot print for energy production as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThis post basically explains the bait-and-switch being used. https://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-... The post also questions how studies like the one you linked are measuring gun ownership rate. Every reliable study uses % of suicides with guns as a proxy for gun ownership rates. RAND notes the same thing: "A fundamental limitation for all of the studies is the lack of direct measures of gun…
Comment linking /p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between?s=r
on “Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)”Submitted Does ChatGPT Exhibit Ideological Bias? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis isn't obviously the case (if you consider gun homicide, which is arguably more important since strictly more people are killed than just in mass shootings): https://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-... > Gun Murder Rate is not correlated with firearm ownership rate in the United States, on a state by state basis. Firearm Homicide Rate is not correlated with guns per capita globally. It’s not…
Comment linking /p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between
on “Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)”Submitted The Covid 19 Red Ink Blue Ink Problem as a story · 5 points
HN discussionLet's see what happens when you apply critical analysis and derive conclusions from data instead of rhetoric: Real Talk about School Shootings – where show how school shooting numbers are a terrible thing around which to craft policy. < https://hwfo.substack.com/p/real-talk-about-school-shootings > The Gun Solution - where we fix the entire gun problem. < https://hwfo.substack.com/p/the-gun-solution >
Comment linking /p/the-gun-solution
on “Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)”Submitted Eleven Fewer Dead People as a story · 4 points
HN discussionRelevant: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/a-new-unit-of-measure-for-civil-...
Comment linking /p/a-new-unit-of-measure-for-civil-unrest
on “Inflation is at a 40 year high. What can history teach us?”Submitted We Are All Apes Behaving Like Ants as a story · 4 points
HN discussionTurning atmospheric CO2 into plastic probably isn't as feasible as turning CO2 into some other stable form directly. Diverting petroleum production into plastic and them making sure it ends up in landfills rather than the sea[1] does seem like a good thing to the extent that plastic production funges against fuel production, I'm not sure to what extent these rely on separating different parts of the oil that comes o…
Comment linking /p/an-illustrated-guide-to-plastic-straws
on “We need to take CO2 out of the sky”Submitted Geographic evidence that gun deaths are cultural as a story · 4 points
HN discussionRelevant: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/an-illustrated-guide-to-plastic-... TL;DR: The bulk of plastic entering the oceans comes from China, India, and Southeast Asia; it's still somewhat the US's fault since we dispose of a lot of plastic per capita and send much of our recycled plastic there; accordingly, the author claims, Americans should generally throw plastic in the garbage instead of recycling it.
Comment linking /p/an-illustrated-guide-to-plastic-straws
on “US Should Create Strategy by End of '22 to Reduce Increasing Ocean Plastic Waste”Submitted Unnecessary Mastectomy Math as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://hwfo.substack.com/p/ar-15s-are-mindbogglingly-safe > While the FBI did break these down by weapon type, they didn’t differentiate between AR-15s or similarly patterned rifles, and grandpa’s bolt action deer rifle. All told, in 2019 there were 364 rifle murders, out of a total of 10,258 firearm murders, accounting for approximately 3.5% of total firearm murders. Nobody uses rifles to murder people because the…
Comment linking /p/ar-15s-are-mindbogglingly-safe
on “AI Bathroom Monitors? Welcome to America's New Surveillance High Schools”Submitted An Illustrated Guide to Plastic Straws as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-... > There is no clear correlation whatsoever between gun ownership rate and gun homicide rate. Not within the USA. Not regionally. Not internationally. Not among peaceful societies. Not among violent ones. Gun ownership doesn’t make us safer. It doesn’t make us less safe. A bivariate correlation simply isn’t there. It is blatantly not-there. It is so trem…
Comment linking /p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between
on “AI Bathroom Monitors? Welcome to America's New Surveillance High Schools”Submitted An Illustrated Guide to Plastic Straws as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://hwfo.substack.com/p/the-surprisingly-solid-mathemati...
Comment linking /p/the-surprisingly-solid-mathematical
on “The Earthquake That Will Devastate the Pacific Northwest (2015)”Submitted The Purge Will End in Violence as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis is a good read on why its not a bad idea: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/the-surprisingly-solid-mathemati...
Comment linking /p/the-surprisingly-solid-mathematical?s=r
on “Ask HN: Anyone else suddenly become a 'prepper'?”Submitted Nuclear Power and Hot Air Balloons as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIt would reduce gun homicide or all homicide? Trick question - there is not even any correlation between gun homicide and firearm ownership rate, let alone all homicide: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-... So even by the myopic logic of taking away rights because the first-order consequences are desirable, it doesn't work out.
Comment linking /p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between
on “Gun deaths were the leading killer of US children in 2020”Submitted Nuclear Power and Hot Air Balloons as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
