Rewriting systems are fascinating, since they're closer to the straight automata realm, there's no pointers, no variables, no functions(think, Orca).
To check if something is in a list, you basically have to implement a 1D physics engine, that sends a signal(a word) down the list, collide with some word or the tail of the list, and bounce back with a signal of its success or failure by rewriting the program as it goes. It's kind of blowing my mind right now.
https://git.sr.ht/~rabbits/parade/tree/main/item/src/paradise.modal
It kills me that this realm of computation is utterly unexplored.