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.

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

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Latest

Flirting with both hearts 💕
When it comes to love, I believe people have two hearts inside them: the first wants to be seen as unique and special; it sees love as two perfect puzzle pieces fitting... · 14 February 2025
Review: Worm, a web serial about superheroes
Worm is a web serial about superheroes. It was written piece-by-piece between 2011-2013, with a chapter being uploaded twice a week, like clockwork, to a blog at... · 5 February 2025

Best

Against self-discipline
I used to believe self-discipline was unquestionably good and that more = better, but not any more. Here's why... · 26 September 2023
What holds communities, and connection, back?
On benches, houses, and community managers · 21 November 2023

Software »

Homemade incremental programming, part 1: how and why to abolish update code, and what React has to do with anything
This is a series about a research rabbit hole I've been going down over the last year or so, about a kind of incremental programming approach for games, UIs, and more [...] · 30 September 2024

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From Mars »

Genderless men
As a younger man, I never felt very well-connected with my gender. Being male seemed somewhat arbitrary to me, like a random coincidence, and sometimes it was a category I was uncomfortable with [...] · 29 August 2024
I feel misled about male mental health
Pretty much all of the emotional suppression I've absorbed hasn't come from traditional masculinity or patriarchy at all · 11 June 2023

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Other

Mathematics
The strange nature of the real numbers · 11 January 2022
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
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
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