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

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Latest
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
When I was younger I felt quite disconnected from my gender [...] · 29 August 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, houses, and community managers · 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
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
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
How big are the largest projects today? What if they were 100x bigger? · 15 June 2022
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
Raymarching signed distance fields for creative coding·Running code at an average rate with a 'stretchy sleep'·Fixed-point numbers: an introduction·React is more than UI—it's a side-effect framework 🧱·Managing software installs on Linux·CRUD is fake; or, what should a data mapper look like?·What's the sign of C's remainder operator "%"?
From Mars
When I was younger I felt quite disconnected from my gender [...] · 29 August 2024
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
Mathematics
The strange nature of the real numbers · 11 January 2022