Ten Child Sex Abuse Rings in Search of a Narrative - 2025
We Are Not Saved
You have probably heard about Rotherham, and the child sex abuse rings that existed there (and ). As with so many things these days, this story entered the public discussion when Musk tweeted about it. For many people I’ve talked to, this was the first they’d heard of it. I actually spoke about . At the time I felt I was late to the game, but apparently I was six years ahead of most people. Given the story's re-emergence I thought it might be worth dusting off that old piece. I think it holds up pretty well, particularly the part about the woeful lack of reporting on the topic. I have...
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Why Did They Really Close Schools?
We Are Not Saved
Exactly five years ago, China identified a “novel coronavirus” and the world was introduced to the term “”. In the time since then arguments continue to rage about the source of the virus, the measures that were taken, and the vaccines that were created. In the midst of all these arguments, everyone seems to agree on one thing: extended school closures were a bad idea. It’s very easy to continue on from that to assume the harms of such closures were obvious from the very beginning—that they happened only because we were blinded by fear. Some people don’t go quite so far, but...
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Short Fiction Book Reviews: Volume II
We Are Not Saved
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Band of Brothers? - Women on the Front Lines
We Are Not Saved
Three things converged for me recently and at the point of their convergence was the issue of placing women in frontline combat roles. The first leg of the convergence was the election of Donald Trump. We’re still debating the reasons why he won, but certainly a reassertion of gender differences are near the top of everyone’s list. For example, allowing natal men into women’s sports. The second was Trump’s nomination of Pete Hesgeth for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth’s nomination is controversial for a lot of reasons, but one of the controversies is his opinion that women should not...
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Mid-length Non-fiction Book Reviews: Volume 3
We Are Not Saved
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Mid-length Non-fiction Book Reviews: Volume 2
We Are Not Saved
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A Review of Nate Silver: The Election and His Book "On the Edge"
We Are Not Saved
He talks about the Village, and the River, but what we really need is a Redoubt. By: Published: 2024 576 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? There are two different ways of approaching the world: the River, which thinks in terms of numbers, expected values, and quantification and the Village, which is the paternalistic expert class which manifests as the vast bureaucracy. What's the author's angle? I got the impression that Silver just wanted to write about things that interested him. Because of this, his thesis was kind of tacked on. That said, he is a fairly passionate advocate...
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Evaluating Epstein Conspiracies and a Review of One Nation Under Blackmail
We Are Not Saved
By: Briefly, what are these books about? The alleged connections between organized crime and national intelligence agencies which led to the numerous illicit operations including , , the JFK Assassination, and of course the entire Jeffrey Epstein mess. A key component of these operations was the tactic of collecting blackmail and using it to convince people to do things they otherwise wouldn’t. What's the author's angle? Charitably, Webb is an autodidact with an enormous command of facts and connections. Uncharitably, she’s someone with a weak evidentiary filter making...
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Short Fiction Book Reviews Volume I
We Are Not Saved
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AI and Forecasting
We Are Not Saved
With the enormous increase in the power of AI (specifically LLMs) people are using them for all sorts of things, hoping to find areas where they’re better, or at least cheaper than humans. FiveThirtyNine (get it?) is one such attempt, and they claim that AI can do forecasting better than humans. Scott Alexander, of Astral Codex Ten, and concluded that they still have a long way to go. I have no doubt that this is the case, but one can imagine that this will not always be the case. What then? My assertion would be that at the point when AI forecasting does “work” (should...
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Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by: Robert Wright
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Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by: Matthew Desmond
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Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough by: Michael Easter
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by: Robert Pirsig
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Finite and Infinite Games by: James Carse
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Fever Pitch by: Nick Hornby
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Sun and Steel by: Yukio Mishima
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Coraline by: Neil Gaiman
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The Gods Never Left Us by: Erich von Däniken
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Mere Christianity by: C. S. Lewis