Notes

Exploring Janet - Jul 2025

A Gorgeous new Clojure-like with native compilation

Iraq War Decision - Jul 2025

How did the US “sleep-walk” into invading Iraq and killing a million people.

Einige Nationalkonservative - Jul 2025

Interessante frühere Mitläufer, die nicht lange bei den Nazis gut angeschrieben waren

Python is against Backwards Compatibility - Jul 2025

I have unreasonable opinions here.

Jangal Movement - Jul 2025

A constitutionalist revolt in WWI Iran turned into a Soviet insurgency

Jujutsu - Jul 2025

Git is dead, long live Jujutsu!

Macros - Jul 2025

Common Lisp, Scheme, Clojure, Janet all handle macros different. Who’s right?

Best implementations in 2025

These are all batteries-included with little care for standards:

Asearch For - Jun 2025

???
Since curiosity first cried
I’ve sought without end hope, grief-sick
I spied th’infinite, soared mong the platonic spheres and reached heaven
Alas, a prisoner of my fate, my mortal being

On Meaning and Life - Jun 2025

Self-sovereignty or Nietzsches Wille zur Macht, the need for freedom is a moral good.

PostScript - Jun 2025

PostScript is fascinating concatenative language of great power, used in PDFs of all things!

Ontology - Jun 2025

Semantic Web, RDFs, triple stores…

Languages and Power - Jun 2025

How does brevity relate to a language’s power? What else matters?

Sapir Worf Programming - Jun 2025

Do different programming languages influence how you think? Obviously!

Phonetic vs Phonemic Spelling - Jun 2025

spelling reform to meaningfully move in a phonetic direction

A phonetic respelling would destroy the languages, because there are too many dialects without matching pronunciations. Though rendering historical texts illegible, a phonemic approach would work. But that would still mean most speakers have 2-3 ways of spelling various vowels. You could predict pronunciation from spelling, but not spelling from pronunciation.

Criticisms of Racket - Jun 2025

I like Racket but others don’t. I’ll collect their objections.

Writing as Tool of Thought - Jun 2025

https://paulgraham.com/writing44.html

Writing doesn’t just communicate ideas; it generates them.

https://mikegrindle.com/posts/write-to-think

Incentive Problem in American Justice System - Mar 2025

Swiftness and certainty of punishment beats severity, the American system focuses on severity. No US court gives speedy trials (violating Model Time Standards).