Will Solfiac's Newsletter

Grooming gangs and the failure of social science

How a 1980s study into Oxford's Pakistani community highlights the blindness of our institutions

Feb 24 • Will Solfiac

73

8

18

AI and the true nature of technological progress

LLMs are cotton spinning, not space travel, and the 20th-century idea of progress was an anomaly.

Feb 15 • Will Solfiac

22

4

5

Modern folk beliefs V: “Your ancestors had kids in their teens”

How marriage and family structure really differed across the world in history

Feb 11 • Will Solfiac

39

6

9

January 2026

Notes on China’s alternative modernity

Mostly impressive, sometimes eerie

Jan 21 • Will Solfiac

111

16

14

December 2025

The rebirth of Anglo-America?

The true level of British ancestry in the US census compared with genetic studies. How the ‘nation of immigrants’ came to be, and the status of Anglo…

Dec 21, 2025 • Will Solfiac

23

2

5

November roundup and links: catastrophising about British emigration; the fertility crisis; and women with PhDs

Some articles, books, podcasts, and Twitter 'current thing' discourse

Dec 1, 2025 • Will Solfiac

7

2

1

November 2025

Modern Folk Beliefs IV: “Climate change will lead to human extinction”

Tracing the rise and decline of climate catastrophism

Nov 23, 2025 • Will Solfiac

32

25

11

Why are black people so overrepresented in advertising?

Sarah Pochin, diversity as blackness, and the taboo around honest discussion of asymmetrical multiculturalism

Nov 4, 2025 • Will Solfiac

15

10

1

October 2025

The liberal centre has run out of ideas on immigration

A deconstruction of Stephen Bush's FT article – "The truth about immigration"

Oct 2, 2025 • Will Solfiac

25

3

5

August 2025

Folk Beliefs of the Upper Normie III: “Europe was a Backwater Before Colonialism”

How a mistaken argument from the California School in the 'great divergence' debate became conventional wisdom

Aug 27, 2025 • Will Solfiac

185

31

17

June 2025

The process of yookay-ification

A personal tour around an emerging country

Jun 17, 2025 • Will Solfiac

64

4

10

April 2025

Folk Beliefs of the Upper Normie II: “Nations are Modern Creations”

How the modernist approach to nationalism of Gellner, Hobsbawm etc. became conventional wisdom.

Apr 30, 2025 • Will Solfiac

58

10

10