Top all-time · #1207
Jack Despain Zhou
Personal blog · tracingwoodgrains.comculturehistory
Jack Despain Zhou writes Tracing Woodgrains, a personal blog at tracingwoodgrains.com about culture and history. Since 2024, 57 different Hacker News readers have linked it 78 times, most often “The FAA's Hiring Scandal: A Quick Overview”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-12, and you can follow it by feed.
A former Mormon's chaotic pursuit of order in a world gone mad. Click to read Tracing Woodgrains, by Jack Despain Zhou, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- The FAA's Hiring Scandal: A Quick Overview23 people · 24 mentions · first linked 2024-01-29
- The FAA’s Hiring Scandal21 people · 22 mentions · first linked 2025-02-04
- How Wikipedia Admin David Gerard Launders His Grudges into the Public Record15 people · 23 mentions · first linked 2024-07-10
- Wikipedia Whitewashes Mao – The Anatomy of Ideological Capture2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-02-05
What Hacker News says?
There are multiple entire websites out there criticizing Wikipedia and what they have to say tends to revolve around the editing process, specifically the social/cultural aspects. Have you attempted to research this yourself? Are you familiar with what Larry Sanger himself had to say about the bias that has emerged in Wikipedia ( https://unherd.com/newsroom/wikipedia-co-founder-i-no-longer... )? e: another comment e…
Comment linking /p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin
on “Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney”Submitted The FAA’s Hiring Scandal as a story · 739 points
HN discussionDid you read this post? "Reliable Sources: How Wikipedia Admin David Gerard Launders His Grudges Into the Public Record" https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...
Comment linking /p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin
on “Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney”Submitted How Wikipedia Admin David Gerard Launders His Grudges into the Public Record as a story · 69 points
HN discussionDid you read this post? https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...
Comment linking /p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin
on “Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney”Submitted The FAA's Hiring Scandal: A Quick Overview as a story · 39 points
HN discussionSaw this on Twitter a while ago: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...
Comment linking /p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin
on “Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney”Submitted Chabuduo World as a story · 12 points
HN discussionYou might enjoy this story: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik... The short version is that you can make Wikipedia report the way you want, but you need to be strategic about it. Wikipedia reports information from "reliable sources", so instead of editing the information directly, you need to insist that the sources that agree with you are reliable and the sources that don't agree with you…
Comment linking /p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin
on “CNN and USA Today have fake websites, I believe Forbes Marketplace runs them”Submitted Harvard Students Are Better Than You as a story · 6 points
HN discussion> As the hiring wave approached, some of Reilly’s friends in the program encouraged her to join the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE), telling her it would help improve her chances of being hired. She signed up as the February wave started. Soon, though, she became uneasy with what the organization was doing, particularly after she and the rest of the group got a voice message from FAA…
Comment linking /p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview
on “The FAA’s Hiring Scandal”Submitted Wikipedia Whitewashes Mao – The Anatomy of Ideological Capture as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> if you pointed that out before Trump's election This article is an expanded version of the author's reporting a year ago: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-... While it didn't make the same splash then, I saw it and didn't see people responding by trying to cancel the author.
Comment linking /p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview
on “The FAA’s Hiring Scandal”Submitted The Full Story of the FAA's Hiring Scandal as a story · 4 points
HN discussionLook at the FAA ATC hiring controversy. https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...
Comment linking /p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview
on “PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program”Submitted Wikipedia Admin David Gerard Launders His Grudges into the Public Record as a story · 2 points
HN discussion>The "correct" answers on a biographical test are to claim to have more experience than your really do. That's not what happened, and that isn't what the test questions were about at all: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-... >You're really stretching to turn this into a scandal. Nobody complained that the answers to the previous test had been leaked. There hadn't been such a test previousl…
Comment linking /p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview
on “Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport”There is some evidence for this, unfortunately https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...
Comment linking /p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview
on “Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport”Unfortunately, there's a long-standing scandal and lawsuit around the ATC and its hiring practices that will inevitably play into the analysis of this tragedy -- details here: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-... I can well believe it has absolutely nothing to do with this disaster, but I don't think either political side has any interest in arguing over the fine points of that distinction.
Comment linking /p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview
on “Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport”Their candidate success rate would probably be higher if they weren’t rejecting the vast majority of their most-qualified applicants for reasons that are clearly pretextual: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...
Comment linking /p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview
on “Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport”Wikipedia has major issues - there are a lot of topics with coordinated editing from bad actors. The verge article is paywalled so I can't read more than the first page + headline, but I can guess the case it makes. - https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik... - https://www.piratewires.com/p/wikipedia-editors-cant-decide-... - https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-wikipedia-s-pro-hamas-edit... It's…
Comment linking /p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin
on “Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks”Note that Asterisk magazine is basically the unofficial magazine for the rationalism community and the author is a rationalist blogger who is naturally very pro-LessWrong. This piece is not anti-Yudkowsky or anti-LessWrong. Here's a counter-piece on David Gerard and his portrayal of LessWrong and Effective Altruism: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...
Comment linking /p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin
on “Why are there so many rationalist cults?”Links for the curious - DCCrimeFacts [0] and I assume the FAA case is Tracing Woodgrains [1], though I could be wrong [0] https://dccrimefacts.substack.com/ [1] https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...
Comment linking /p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview
on “The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong”You were misinformed about his response to Roko's basilisk. He never thought it was plausible. He freaked out for an unrelated meta reason, basically, and later admitted he overreacted. (Basically he did not want forum members putting attempted mindviruses out into the ether as a general principle.) Critics of Yudkowsky have been trying to misportray that for years to make him seem delusional. You can see an example…
Comment linking /p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin
on “AI companies in race to demonstrate their model most threatening to humanity”That link is unlikely to be an unbiased accounting. Speaking of long-winded rationalist blog posts, the evidence for that claim is this long, detailed, full-of-receipts accounting of David Gerard's use of RationalWiki (though mostly Wikipedia) to push his personal agenda in subtle ways while scrupulously following the rules to avoid being caught at it: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...
Comment linking /p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin
on “Why is every rationalist blog post way too long?”It looks like this: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...
Comment linking /p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview
on “California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones”It is by no means a good publication, but at the same time being accepted as a citation on Wikipedia or not is not necessarily a particularly objective measure of quality. I recommend reading https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik... for the critical perspective on Wikipedia's integrity in this regard.
Comment linking /p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin
on “UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16”This provides a good overview. There are some good sources within if you want to dig deeper. https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...
Comment linking /p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview
on “America desperately needs more air traffic controllers”Too bad that we have some 2,000+ already-qualified FAA ATC of certain persuasion that are "just sitting" around waiting for their stress-free class-action money in the Brigida vs FAA 2015 reverse discrimination lawsuit. Think they'll now work as ATC after they win? Doesn't help to tie up 900+ more potential qualified ATC (again of certain persuadion) when FAA tried reverse discrimination AGAIN in 2021 in Brigida vs…
Comment linking /p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring
on “America desperately needs more air traffic controllers”https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...
Comment linking /p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring
on “America desperately needs more air traffic controllers”
