Thoughts

say “I do the Apple News crossword” well okay. I’m sorry I don’t have a friend who writes crosswords for Apple News. And then you have to walk away like it’s an NPC in a point and click adventure game and you’ve heard all of their voice lines.

capable of hurting each other in profound and lasting ways. But I think it's possible." -John in today's vlogbrothers

as doing the thing that you most want to do which will be positive? I wish I had been exposed to the rationalist position as a young child. I would have described my philosophy as very rational but I imagined the conclusion of rationalism to be very different. Obviously, I can make logical, rational arguments against Superintelligence or shrimp suffering—and maybe I should—but that's begging the question because even if it is rational, I refuse to say that it's not dumb, and so I can't call myself rational.

innovative reasons why Java is dumb. (I'm totally hating on Java because it's fun.)

My point is that a lot of people don't have the privilege to choose an internally consistent correct and kind ideology. They need to do something. As a low stakes-example, saying, "you should never feed your kids fast food." Regardless of whether that's a good rule, it's idealist because that's not helpful in finding food for your kids to eat tonight. Edit: I think where I was going with this is that it's possible to align yourself with system or rules that are obviously good and correct (like a complex dietary plan for your kids) that are equally useless at solving problems (like where you're going to eat tonight).

There are three main objects being contested: The Package Control Client, the Package Control Server, and of course the Package Control package repository (that is, the list of packages). There are three players involved: Sublime HQ, wbond, and "the community" (everyone other than wbond and Sublime HQ). wbond, would argue that "the community" is an incorrect and disingenuous designation. And of course these people are not representative of every Sublime Text user. However, there are a relatively small number of users who regularly contribute to the Package Control client, who regularly contribute to the default packages, who develop Sublime Text packages on GitHub, who are active in the Sublime Text Discord, and have no problem developing in collaboratively and in public. Maybe "open source Sublime Text contributors" would be a better term. A non-comprehensive list: deathaxe, kaste, keith-hall, FichteFoll, braver, michaelblyons, etc. wbond de facto creates this group himself when he argues (to give you a taste of what's to come) that no one except himself or SublimeHQ can be trusted. Package Control was originally developed by wbond, until about 2022, when he stepped away from Sublime Text. SublimeHQ is the company that develops Sublime Text. Okay, to set the scene. It's May 2025: Package Control Client is maintained by deathaxe. deathaxe has write permissions to the Package Control Client repository: github.com/wbond/package_control, and all commits/merged PRs after 2022 are attributable to him. The Package Control package repository is maintained by the community. For poor architectural reasons, the packages are split into libraries, which are in github.com/packagecontrol/channel, and packages, which are in github.com/wbond/package_control_channel/. Several community members have write access to both repositories. Community members review and merge all new packages and libraries. (The wbond GitHub account is wbond (obviously) and the sublimehq GitHub org is SublimeHQ, but the packagecontrol GitHub organization is controlled by the community.) The Package Control server and its domain name, packagecontrol.io, is maintained by wbond. The source code running on the server is open source (https://github.com/wbond/packagecontrol.io), but only wbond has the ability to deploy it. The package control client requests the package list from the server, instead of from GitHub directly. This prevents clients from hitting Github's rate limits, but leads to lots of traffic to the server. (It also updates every hour, and generates a new last-modified date, so there's little http caching, even though packages do not update that frequently.) SublimeHQ pays wbond, on the order of hundreds of dollars every month, to cover hosting and bandwidth costs for packagecontrol.io. wbond keeps the server online, although when it goes down, he has no way of knowing because he doesn't use Sublime Text. In Feb 2025 packagecontrol.io stopped picking up package updates. It wasn't resolved until March when someone emailed wbond. I stopped using Package Control during this time, and switched to a dumb Ruby script that cloned all packages I wanted from GitHub and ran `git pull` to update them. packagecontrol.io is also used when first installing Package Control. When you tell sublime text to install package control, it will pull a version of package control from packagecontrol.io. This version of package control is not updated manually and was last updated by wbond some time before 2020. This version of package control uses openssl 1.1.1 (which reached end of life in 2023); and will sometimes break if your system openssl is more modern. (If it doesn't break, then it will immediately update itself to the most recent version of Package Control on GitHub.) packagecontrol.io also only supports Python 3.3 libraries. This gets complicated because of the library/package distinction, and because Sublime Text packages can use Python 3.3 or 3.8. So I don't understand the exact issue, but deathaxe (remember, the package control client maintainer) has an idea of changes that need to be made to the package control server. For all of these reasons, the community is itching to get packagecontrol.io to a state where it can be actively maintained and developed by the community. As early as June 2024, wbond said "The only logical place for Package Control to transfer to is Sublime HQ, for security and trust issues" and that he would "work something out" with SublimeHQ. When packagecontrol.io went down in February 2025, this question came up again: "why can't wbond transfer it to the community?" A SublimeHQ employee commented that they were waiting for wbond, and then edited his message to say "I have no clue when things are going to get done" and wbond said "Yeah, I'm really sorry everyone, life keeps getting busier and busier as my kids get older and my role at work now is AI-centric, aka the fire hose" (wbond works at Uber, for context). In response to the outages and issues with packagecontrol.io, and this communication, one Sublime Text community member (kaste) writes a Package Control server replacement: github.com/packagecontrol/thecrawl, which powers a new website: packages.sublimetext.io (sublimetext.io is a community-controlled domain). It's architected in such a way as to fit in GitHub action's free plan. I'm skipping over the details of some of the software development process here. Obviously, other users are involved in validating that thecrawl works, and the pointing the subdomain to it. August 2025: deathaxe pushes an update to the Package Control client to use the new channel at packages.sublimetext.io, cutting sublimetext.io out of the picture. Ben (our resident SublimeHQ employee) is confused by this, saying, "I would have preferred to take over hosting before it got released to everyone." There had been no discussion that I'm aware of, up to this point, of SublimeHQ taking over thecrawl. Ben's most recent update before this was "some progress is being made in taking over packagecontrol.io. That said I don't want to dissuade from something better being build". "Given that the plan was for PC to be hosted by us I figured that was also the plan for this, but yea I should have communicated that" -Ben wbond's messages when he finds out about this have an angry tone; he says, "Yup I'm pissed." He views this as a hostile supply chain attack. His argument, essentially, is that since all packages were "proxied" through packagecontrol.io, you only had to trust him previously. Now you have to trust "random individuals on the internet", "5 random cooks" (his words) and that "if people want to switch to sublimetext.io, I have no horse in the race, but I can't in good conscience make that decision for them." He also says, "if PC gets taken over, it will be me and SHQ dragged through the issue and reputation hit" and that "my name is associated with this project and I've always taken security very seriously." This is where I'm confused, because deathaxe's version of Sublime Text has been shipping with a modern version of openssl but the version of Sublime Text shipped by wbond's website packagecontrol.io uses openssl 1.1.1 (ended security support in 2023, as mentioned), and runs Python 3.6 (which ended security support in 2021) on the server. Two more quotes I'll pull out: "Changing the domain is the absolute root level of security on the project, and I would not expect that to be unilaterally done in an opt-out way." "I don't care if you don't understand - I'm not here to convince anyone of what I find acceptable" wbond reverts the change to the channel and removes deathaxe's maintainer permissions. He does not release a new version, so the latest version of package control still uses the packagecontrol.io channel. SublimeHQ still doesn't have access to packagecontrol.io. wbond no longer has a personal laptop. SublimeHQ releases a beta build of Sublime Text running on Python 3.13. (Current versions of Sublime Text only use Python 3.3 and 3.8, which was EoL 2024.) The package control client doesn't run on it. The wbond/ package control GitHub repos have been moved to github/sublimehq. SublimeHQ has not taken over reviewing and merging PRs like they said they would. I may switch back to Sublime text when all packages run a version of Python that is receiving security fixes, including Package Control.

Defeats the entire point

Welcome to the new normal, same as the old normal.

* Caravan Palace * underscores * The Happy Fits * twenty one pilots * Sylvan Esso * Switchfoot * K.Flay * half•alive * Jain * Flipturn Previous music artist roundups: 2019: https://twitter.com/Matthias_4910/status/1203040883983044608 2020: https://thoughts.learnerpages.com/?show=34242742-c9e3-460a-a50f-86d94ec08ceb 2021: https://thoughts.learnerpages.com/?show=7f77fad3-e811-4308-9242-2ee9dd5659ca 2022: https://thoughts.learnerpages.com/?show=c020314f-9896-4ced-9e3f-473c7c9f5fbe 2023: ? 2024: ? 2025: you're looking at it

* I started and finished the series this year * I'm caught up with the series * Finishing this book was one of the things on my list to do in 2025 It was also just a good book.

project to distribute, but for now, no reason to advocate for it. I will say, ReleaseSafe is only 5% slower, which may be worth it by itself.

I don’t know if this is a feminist or anti-feminist position but I don’t think you can productively talk about “men” and “women” as broad groups. Yes the current system is sexist but that doesn’t mean you have to adopt their language or even their groupings. I could elaborate more but not right now.

ambitious in that my goals for myself are lofty. In addition to my goals of finishing writing a book and completing all Minecraft advancements before the end of the year, I’m going to try to read Wind and Truth, which I just started today. Should be doable if I maintain at least an hour a day.

he can add realpath to the standard library.

I gotta listen to some millennial teacher explain how she's been unjustly maligned by her coworkers because that's what's in front of me.

Former comedian turned software engineer misunderstands the "daily standup" Edit (Dec 19th): I think it's supposed to be "Autistic software engineer confronted..."

> Lucifer, he came to me > He said, "Take this bass guitar, kid, then you'll be free, It's true, it's true" > I done saw the gates of hell > They were lined with golden amplifiers-I could tell > It was cool, it was cool ... > Jesus then came up to me > He said, "Boy, you gonna lose yourself if you believe, In blues, in blues" > I showed him my crazy beats > And the Son of God could not help but to stomp his feet > It's true, it's true ... > Lucifer and Jesus saw that the blues > Were not for Heaven or for Hell, but for all > It's true > Hot nails reveal that I, I was born to be a rocker > And a rocker I'll die > It's true

fetish life under volume drum music sheep sleep eep meep feet. inside outside paper houses paper mario paper paper trouble lower flower feather hover

miserable and so weak. I'm cold and hungry and I lie there unmoving. My body is still but it's not clear if this is a victory or if I am already too far gone. Or if whatever pushed me off the cliff before is still here. If it is and I fall down again I am far far too weak to make the climb again.

obviously very legible but it feels less important. It's #181c21 on white (17.11:1 contrast ratio). In contrast, this site is #0C1F44 on #FFFDFA (15.96:1); GitHub is #1f2328 on white (15.79:1), and black on white is 21:1. I'm very confused because the numbers show codeberg with higher contrast, but it feels like there's significantly less contrast. There's something off. I just don't know what. GitHub is particularly easy for me to read, even compared to other sites, and always has been. => https://thoughts.learnerpages.com/?show=3f4fa609-8acd-471b-adcd-ab92122a9151

in a REPL first, run it, see if it works, and if it does, copy-and-paste it into my editor. Compiled languages give me the advantage of types in the IDE, but this is less effective than a REPL. There's a similar argument people make for Zig. Zig is often criticized for being less safe than Rust because it allows you to write code that segfaults very easily, whereas Rust has compile-time checks to prevent that. But people who understand Zig, like andrewrk and matklad argue that Zig can be safer than Rust[0][1]. Because Zig exposes lower-level, more powerful, constructs, it's easier to write unsafe code, but it's also possible to write safer code. This is how I see the REPL-typesystem trade-off. REPLs are effectively a lower-level, more-powerful, construct than static analysis like a type system. REPLs allow me to check for type errors, runtime errors, and correctness errors all at once. Tests accomplish the same thing as REPLs, here. You need some strategy for catching runtime errors. And if you have a good strategy for catching runtime errors then pushing type errors back to runtime doesn't mean that they get hit in production (at least in theory). Too lazy to get the actual links [0]: there's a lobsters comment from andrew like a week ago [1]: "hard mode rust"

Maybe because I had watched enough of John’s videos that “TB is our deadliest disease and persists because of injustice” wasn’t new information to me. I think I was looking for a new, deeper, narrative along one axis, but it really was a patchwork of “everything” about TB. It wasn’t really about Henry, it wasn’t really about PIH, it wasn’t really about the history of TB, and it wasn’t really about the way that social injustice allows TB to thrive today. That being said, it was the easiest-to-read non-fiction book I’ve ever read. I assumed the density of non-fiction was inherit to the topic, but it appears to be a result of convention, which Green eschews for a very casual style.

> for reasons nobody can explain -bill wurtz

I'm current on hour 2 of trying to get Over-Overkill. 4 deaths, 2 stacks of rockets. A sheep and a spider killed already. I just set my standards so so so low. "visible achievements" on my keepInventory world and I can't fricking do it. My friends are playing on a realm without me because I'm dying over and over again trying to get this fricking mace hit. I'm like BdoubleO except he's good at other parts of the game I have no redeeming skill qualities at all. For the amount of time I've played this game it's pathetic. Pathetic. This is my real-life goal. But I'm going to keep trying. I don't care about being happy. It's about doing what I want to do and exercising some small part of my will over the minecraft world.

‘I wish I didn’t have to listen to men’ and ‘6 foot is the bare minimum’ and ‘that biker who catcalled me is so hot’ and Tumblr is bad in this regard but somehow the real world manages to be much worse.

When I open zsf.zulipchat.com, the backend serializes the ids of all 49,000 message that have been sent in that channel as part of the initial web request. If I click on the notifications channel, the client starts sending off on fetch request for each of those 49,000 messages, causing me to get rate-limited (429 Too Many Requests) after less than 200, completely breaking the application.

users), surely they, being the Zulip developers, would have fixed it. But no, 2.57s.

It's because they serialize a megabyte of JSON data into the page. My internet is crazy fast, but it just takes Python that long to generate the page.

good video editor.

(from Tiger Style) The difference is that to web developers, time itself is treated as a resource. This is not wrong necessarily (since a web request that hangs for 1s is bad no matter what), but sometimes "time as a resource" modeling is used as a substitute for actually modelling the other resources.

temptation to make it not an *issue*, instead of trying to make it performant code. Caching, background jobs, batching, etc.

"If you have a failed attempt and you did not get the async line...[you should] see whether the invisible chunk is still invisible." Yeah of course. It would be a big problem if the invisible chunk wasn't invisible. That would be bad. What's an async line?

and titled "Beginner-friendly Tutorial: Command Block Items in Survival" uh huh He's like: "at the end here [a observer] blinks" > observer is not blinking "but you can only see that it blinks if you right click it" > right clicks it > observer disappears "okay usually these observers would blink, but right now just turned into air because async observer lines sometimes do weird stuff" => https://youtu.be/Glg-K2N4g5Q?t=294 Okay also, I'm not a poser I watched some stuff on command blocks in survival when SciCraft did it, but that does not mean I understood everything.

application" like brugh. Who cares it's the coolest thing I've ever seen.

There's a scene in Mull's Five Kingdoms where Jace, a former child slave, after being freed, is very rude to a slave serving them in a cafe. And Cole (from our world, was in slavery for like a month or two) rebukes him, and Mira (also been a slave for a while, also the princess, also 11 years old), is like, "he's processing the fact that he was treated rudely as a slave, you have to cut him some slack because of that." And think some of Ron's attitude towards the house-elves is interesting when viewed through that lens. He's always been from the poor family that doesn't have a house elf, and now he's being served by house elves, and he's unwilling speak against that. The obvious difference is that Ron wasn't a house elf, but he's also not outwardly mean to house elves. He sees no one changing the system to help him, and so he asks why he should change the system to help someone else. I think the other thing that makes the comparison interesting is that Jace and Ron are both good guys, they both are helpful and do make the right decisions. But you get the impression that they maybe wouldn't do it alone. Their loyalty is to their friends. Jace wants to protect Mira (and Mira wants to overthrow the king) and Ron wants to protect Harry (and Harry wants to overthrow Voldemort).

https://youtu.be/plNiMYeHI4Q?t=198 "I—" *pause* *look at camera out of corner of eye* *one hand off mic* "well yeah" So fricking good

-Work, Jars of Clay “I have no fear of drowning, it’s the breathing that’s taking all the work” Today after making the post about persistent tightness in my chest I wondered if I could stop breathing, just kill myself by holding my breath.

On those days, I attempt to cajole myself into going by reminding myself that the structure of putting on formal clothes and sitting still and listening to someone talk and singing with other people is good. And while, even at my most atheistic, I believe that those things are good, those things may not be good reasons to go to church. That is, going to church in order to participate in a live music concert is not a good reason to go to church and you will likely be disappointed. Which is interesting because it’s counter intuitive. Surely if live music is good and belief in God is neutral, then going to church for the music is good. But then you end up as BSN I guess.

a physical aspect too. Like it just sucks.

This post is about the Batman villain the Joker (even the different forms that character has taken in my lifetime), but it's mostly about the Minecraft YouTuber ClownPierce. (art by birdonaplatter.tumblr.com)

surrealist arguments. What's the difference between being a surrealist and being anti-rational?

(Implying that compiled languages aren't worth using because they don't provide faster-than-linear speedups.) Which is super super interesting because it's so obviously wrong in the sense that the linear difference between Ruby and Zig is very frequently 1,000x and it turns out that linear differences of even 10x are significant in real world applications. But there's also an argument that it's insightful because there are applications that don't care about linear performance where Ruby is used. I used to be in the "linear performance doesn't matter" camp, but I didn't understand just how significant the performance differences can be.

> The main goal of the esbuild bundler project is to bring about a new era of build tool performance - esbuild.github.io/ Talk about success. Also: > Go can be lightning fast, but only if you leave idiomatic Go behind. https://avittig.medium.com/golangs-big-miss-on-memory-arenas-f1375524cc90 What excites me about Zig is how close performant code and idiomatic code are.

Matthias's programming language of the day is Scarpet, a language developed by Gnembon as a scripting language for Minecraft.

interesting which hasn't existed before. Someone at formerly at Bun left, in part because of forced-AI culture, preceding Bun's acquisition by an AI company for a lot of money.

life that I cannot change and there is very little about my life that I have thought to change which I have not changed. My life and my ideal imagined version of my life are very similar in a large number of material facets. But I'm still unhappy. And I don't have any other ideas for what to change. So I think that's where my feeling of hopelessness comes from. I can imagine a lot that that's different from this, but it's hard to imagine much better.