H
HWFO
hwfo.substack.com · Group blog · on HN since 2021
Substack with contrarian, data-driven essays on energy, guns, policy, and public debates, written under the HWFO name.
What HN saysHN links it for specific claims, such as the Hunga Tonga warming estimate and the gun ownership versus homicide argument. Commenters give no broader opinion.
29HN people shared it
17linked it in comments
19stories submitted
476story points
11 months agolast shared
2021people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Everybodys lying about the link between8 people · first shared 2021
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- 4Nuclear Power and Hot Air Balloons2 people · 4 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 5A New Unit of Measure for Civil Unrest2 people · 2 points · first shared 2022 · 1 comments on HN
- 6Talkin about hunga tonga2 people · first shared 2023
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- 12Geographic evidence that gun deaths are cultural1 people · 4 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
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- 14The Purge Will End in Violence1 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 15Unnecessary Mastectomy Math1 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
giardini · 2023-09-11
"Talkin About Hunga Tonga":
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/talkin-about-hunga-tonga
FTFA:
"The authors project this one volcano produced a warming effect on the planet equal to about 5.2 years worth of total global carbon emissions in one go, and it’s going to be stuck up there for over half a decade.
Let’s restate that to be perfectly clear.
If you believe that CO2 is slowly warming the planet, then the net result of this one very unusual volcano will be to fast forward global warming five years, and keep us at that fast-forward location for between five and ten years, and then will slowly abate. But because 2023 internet life is a sea of culture war, that straightforward scientific conclusion has gotten churned into the modern media culture war engine, dragging the study’s authors into the milieu.
mgarfias · 2022-03-24
This is a good read on why its not a bad idea: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/the-surprisingly-solid-mathematical?s=r
JuniperMesos · 2025-12-22
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between
> 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 tremendously not-there that the “not-there-ness” of it alone should be a huge news story.
settrans · 2023-02-25
Indeed this is HWFO's core thesis: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/an-illustrated-guide-to-plastic-straws
suoduandao2 · 2022-10-05
laverya · 2022-06-24
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-comparisons
Acrobatic_Road · 2022-05-26
This post basically explains the bait-and-switch being used.
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between?s=…
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 prevalence. All of the authors use FS/S as a proxy for gun prevalence" https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/essays/firearm-preva…
https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/essays/firearm-preva…
car_analogy · 2022-04-22
It 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-between
So even by the myopic logic of taking away rights because the first-order consequences are desirable, it doesn't work out.
trash001 · 2022-04-04
> 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-healthcare?…
trashcan02 · 2022-04-03
> 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
tfehring · 2021-12-02
Relevant: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/an-illustrated-guide-to-plastic-straws
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.
anandrew · 2021-11-26
Even before clicking on the story, I knew there would be a "gun-related homicide" vs. "gun ownership" graph, and not an "all homicide" vs. "gun ownership" graph. Do we want to minimize all homicide, or only gun homicide, and don't care about people killed by other means? (It goes without saying that any human right that increases homicide rate should be abolished /s)
The missing data: https://diegobasch.com/homicides-vs-gun-ownership
And more on typical data manipulation in gun debates: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between
Symmetry · 2021-10-05
Turning 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 out of the ground in the refinery for different uses rather than having one common pool that could be used for either. But plastic buried in landfills does seem to remain out of the biosphere for long enough to be a useful repository of carbon.
[1] Remember, throw plastic away don't try to recycle it or it'll mostly end up in the middle of the Pacific https://hwfo.substack.com/p/an-illustrated-guide-to-plastic-straws
brippalcharrid · 2021-04-30
For gun murder, it could actually be a small negative correlation.
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between
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.
MikeUt · 2021-02-22
> There was a reasonably strong correlation between the rate of guns recovered and traced in a state in 2019 and that state’s murder rate
How strange they would use the "rate of guns recovered and traced", and not simply gun ownership. Presumably those guns aren't traced for the fun of it, but largely to assist in crime investigations?
Perhaps the reason is that, if you use plain gun ownership data, the trends are far less clear: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between