Nullius in verba
"Take no one's word for it"
People grow best where they continuously experience an ingenious blend of support and challenge; the rest is commentary.
– Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads
Hi, I’m Tom and I write about design, software, introspection, and rationality.
If you have any comments, questions, or feedback, please email me at tom@tmewett.com or leave an anonymous message. I want to hear from you!
Favourite blogs: Sasha Chapin · Neurotic Gradient Descent · Numb at the Lodge
Favourite tech blogs: Dan Luu · Ted Kaminski
You can also find me on X/Twitter · GitHub · Bluesky
Latest
If there was ever one thing worth understanding deeply, it would be happiness. [...] Should I be so surprised when I'm unhappy, if I unconsciously believe it's impossible, or boring, or unfair to be happy? ·
13 April 2024
I guess I'm afraid of everything falling apart. I'm afraid of needless pain and suffering. War that starts on nothing more than a misunderstanding. [...] ·
3 March 2024
Best
I used to believe self-discipline was unquestionably good and that more = better, but not any more. Here's why... ·
26 September 2023
On benches, politics, houses, and PR ·
21 November 2023
Self, introspection, & rationality
If there was ever one thing worth understanding deeply, it would be happiness. [...] Should I be so surprised when I'm unhappy, if I unconsciously believe it's impossible, or boring, or unfair to be happy? ·
13 April 2024
Somewhere in the last 2 years I discovered Internal Family Systems, and it's been one of the most impactful things I've learned. [...] Parts work is path to seeing the mind as more than a dumb machine of suffering [...] ·
21 December 2023
[...] The problem is I subconsciously don't recognise the incomplete thought as valid, so I don't hold onto it. [...] ·
17 January 2024
Dreams, butterflies, and finding true worlds ·
5 March 2022
6 September 2022
You've probably been told that it will relax and de-stress you. It's more about awareness collapse ·
12 November 2022
An overview of how knowledge is created, and its limits ·
22 October 2021
Software
18 November 2022
6 February 2022
It's well-known that state management in programs can lead to a lot of problems. Spaghetti machines of far too many transitions, orchestrated by widely-visible variables, lead to hard-to-debug, hard-to-change code. [...] ·
24 June 2023
How big are the largest projects today? What if they were 100x bigger? ·
15 June 2022
3 October 2020
Most reactive systems in use today lack important abstractions, making it easy to write inconsistent code ·
30 July 2023
Ideas for a language targeting shell scripts ·
1 May 2022
23 February 2019
From Mars
Pretty much all of the emotional suppression I've absorbed hasn't come from traditional masculinity or patriarchy at all ·
11 June 2023
Miscellaneous
30 January 2024
Any child who has to spend a lot of effort learning how to fit in eventually learns that it's an endless game of losing. [...] ·
29 August 2023
I guess I'm afraid of everything falling apart. I'm afraid of needless pain and suffering. War that starts on nothing more than a misunderstanding. [...] ·
3 March 2024
19 September 2020
7 November 2020
Mathematics
The strange nature of the real numbers ·
11 January 2022
2 April 2019
15 April 2019