I want a Rust function with the following signature

fn specialise<T, U, R>(
in: T,
special: impl FnOnce(U) -> R,
fallback: impl FnOnce(T) -> R,
) -> R;

If T and U end up being the same type, it invokes `special` on `in`. Otherwise, it invokes `fallback` on `in`.

I believe this function would cover a good 80% of practical uses for specialisation, and be cleaner to use both for implementers and API users.

My text editor is *so close* to being usable as a daily driver.

So much so that I've deciding to rewrite it in itself 🙃

The GNOME desktop environment is surprisingly resource-light nowadays. I just installed it on an old laptop that never used to be able to run it without stuttering about 5 years ago, and it's buttery smooth now. I'm sure <alternative DE> beats GNOME in <specific way>, but for me personally, everything that previously pushed me away from it has now been addressed.

Remember in the early 2010s when "there's no difference between US presidential candidates" was the talking point? Yet, today, US voters have some of the widest and most fundamental gulfs between their candidates of any nominally democratic state on earth.

You'd be a moron to stay at home come polling day.

Test firing a small pot made from self-refined clay. The thermocouple reported about 800 °C at peak (for about 20 minutes), so hopefully that's sufficient. Just need to wait for it to cool over the next few hours now.

This kiln cost £7.30 to make: £5.30 for the bricks and £2 for the wire mesh that sits under the charcoal.

I came up with a neat idea for rendering shadows today, but after a bit of searching it turns out that I'd just reinvented shadow volumes 🙁

Really quite shocked at the effectiveness of a single layer of bubble wrap insulation on the inside of the greenhouse. Last night the greenhouse was barely scratching 3-4 °C difference with outside temperatures, tonight it's managing closer to 9 °C difference.

That might not sound like much, but just a degree below zero can near enough kill everything in there in a single night.

Having an intelligent dog that knows you and understands you is nice. Having an intelligent dog that knows how to open doors, flick latches, and climb cupboards to acquire socks? Not so much.

The implication here that Californians are uniquely at threat of cancer and reproductive problems is mildly humorous.

If OpenAI is going to treat copyrighted works as public domain, maybe everything they produce, including their models, should also be treated similarly?

Well, the clay-heavy soil is waterlogged and nothing will grow, so I might as well make some lemonade with my lemons. This is experiment #1 of turning the clay into pottery and firing it over a gas hob.

Success? Sort of. It's still in one piece, and it has the characteristic tinny ring of pottery when tapped, but I need to filter the clay more to remove large particles. Needs temper added to it to prevent cracking during drying. Also, time to build a pottery wheel.

It's only a real storm if the BBC spends most of the morning broadcasting a video of a trampoline going for a ride down the street or some other activity that trampolines aren't supposed to do.

The mince pies will continue until morale improves

The point of the federated model is that it's inherently more immune to the behaviour of bad actors pervasively affecting everybody, right?

There's so much joy in something as simple as putting up a shelf. I try to make sure that I finish each weekend with at least some physically manifest evidence of me having achieved something, and this seems as good as any.

I started a new job recently. The commute is about 80 kilometres. I was convinced that I'd end up needing to buy a car but it turns out that a folding bike + trains is at least as fast as a car, gives me almost an hour to read, and I hit my daily exercise quota without needing to really try. Do the maths! You might find that public transport and a bike suits you better than a car ever could.

It's really quite cold

The withoutboats article is good. As much as it pains me to say it, Rust has promised too much in the domain of stability for a practical effect system to ever be workable on top of what is already here. The place to implement an effect system is (a) a new language or (b) Rust as it was a decade ago.