Michael Kohl
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citizen428.net
Michael Kohl
@citizen428.net
110 followers 170 following 75 posts
Your friendly neighborhood anarcho-cynicalist. I do things with computers and occasionally succeed. 🇦🇹 in 🇹🇭 since 2013. Fan of 1990s pop culture. I delete old posts.

I'm more active on Mastodon: https://chaos.social/@citizen428
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citizen428.net
Michael Kohl @citizen428.net · Oct 1
JOMO [dʒōmō] noun Joy Of Missing Out; feeling content with staying in and disconnecting as a form of self-care.
citizen428.net
Favorite research paper title of the year so far:

"Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models"

https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
November 28, 2025 at 5:49 PM
citizen428.net
This is certainly the nicest looking type implementation I've seen in #ruby so far:

https://codeberg.org/Iow/type
type
Elegant types in Ruby
codeberg.org
November 27, 2025 at 5:19 PM
citizen428.net
"Build a Compiler in Five Projects"

https://kmicinski.com/functional-programming/2025/11/23/build-a-language/

#racket #lisp #compiler
Build a Compiler in Five Projects
Class website here: https://kmicinski.com/cis531-f25
kmicinski.com
November 24, 2025 at 3:42 PM
citizen428.net
Oh boy, after waiting way too long I finally started using Typst:

https://github.com/typst/typst

I don't think I'm ever gonna write LaTeX again.
GitHub - typst/typst: A markup-based typesetting system that is powerful and easy to learn.
A markup-based typesetting system that is powerful and easy to learn. - typst/typst
github.com
November 24, 2025 at 6:48 AM
citizen428.net
One underrated — at least IMO — tmux feature are popups. For example, I have `Ctrl-a g` mapped to open a `gitu` [1] popup with a 90% window size. Once I'm done, the popup will just automatically close and I'm back at my regular terminal window.
Screenshot of the gitu git interface as a tmux popup. gitu is showing one unstaged change to tmux.conf, a list of recent commits, and a keyboard shortcuts help menu at the bottom.
November 23, 2025 at 4:42 PM
citizen428.net
If you use #vim or #neovim as your #git commit editor, you can automatically put it in insert mode by setting `core.editor` or the `GIT_CONFIG` environment variable to `vim +startinsert!`.
November 22, 2025 at 4:36 PM
citizen428.net
Most times I try to use an LLM for coding, the experience can be summed up as "Old man yells at Claude".
An image of the TV show "The Simpsons". It shows a newspaper clipping with the headline "Old Man Yell at Cloud". It also shows a picture of Grandpa Simpson yelling and shaking his fist a single white cloud in a blue sky.
November 21, 2025 at 7:06 AM
citizen428.net
I’m increasingly reaching the conclusion that all Lovecraftian horror is a workplace metaphor.

Cosmic dread: ✅
Forbidden knowledge: ✅ Indescribable horrors: ✅
Human irrelevance: ✅
November 20, 2025 at 4:54 AM
Reposted by Michael Kohl
bertsbooks.bsky.social
Good morning. We are open. 📖☕️
.
November 19, 2025 at 8:31 AM
citizen428.net
Interesting new experimental build system for #ocaml from one of Dune's core developers:

https://www.alicecaml.org/about/
Alice: About
A radical, experimental OCaml build system and package manager
www.alicecaml.org
November 18, 2025 at 3:36 AM
citizen428.net
Pet peeve: companies describing themselves as “a family”? What are you trying to say here? You’re dysfunctional and bad at talking to each other?
November 17, 2025 at 7:18 AM
citizen428.net
One of my more obscure musical obsessions is the Bashkir-language group Ay Yola, from Bashkortostan, Russia. I saw them live in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and they are amazing.

https://song.link/https://open.spotify.com/track/6g1wT5JktYiHe8AytW6MTG?si=47c7cc4a61194691

#music
November 14, 2025 at 2:47 PM
Reposted by Michael Kohl
tkdodo.eu
🤔 What if there were a conference without talks? Just hanging out with OSS maintainers & builders, seeing what they’re working on, and learning cool stuff by actually talking to people.

🤯 What if hallway track turned into the whole event!

💡 @tannerlinsley.com is exploring it. Interested? ⬇️
Web Forge Conf - A new kind of web developer conference
A community funded, not for profit event built for creators and the developers who use their work. Less stage. More story. All signal.
webforgeconf.com
November 13, 2025 at 9:36 AM
citizen428.net
“Move over, Alan Turing: meet the working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn’t see in the movies”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/12/move-over-alan-turing-meet-the-working-class-hero-of-bletchley-park-you-didnt-see-in-the-movies
Move over, Alan Turing: meet the working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn’t see in the movies
The Oxbridge-educated boffin is feted as the codebreaking genius who helped Britain win the war. But should a little-known Post Office engineer named Tommy Flowers be seen as the real father of computing?
www.theguardian.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:17 AM
citizen428.net
Replacing workers with robots controlled by underpaid operators in developing countries: the billionaire techbro’s wet dream.

https://restofworld.org/2025/philippines-offshoring-automation-tech-jobs/
Japanese convenience stores are hiring robots run by workers in the Philippines
Filipino tele-operators remotely control Japan’s convenience store robots and train AI, benefiting from an uptick in automation-related jobs.
restofworld.org
November 10, 2025 at 1:53 AM
citizen428.net
"Ironclad is a (partially) formally verified, real-time capable, UNIX-like operating system kernel for general-purpose and embedded uses. It is written in SPARK and Ada, and is comprised of 100% free software."

https://ironclad-os.org/
Ironclad
Ironclad is a free software formally verified kernel written in SPARK/Ada
ironclad-os.org
November 9, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Michael Kohl
ocaml.org
Supporting OCurrent: FLOSS/Fund Backs Maintenance for OCaml's Native CI Framework
Announcing FLOSS Fund's support for maintenance of OCaml's native CI and workflow framework OCurrent
dlvr.it
October 31, 2025 at 6:35 PM
citizen428.net
Huh, I was so used to always using Jane Street's Base when writing #ocaml that I haven't looked at the stdlib in a very long time. Turns out it's pretty usable now. Just updated some code and it wasn't that much effort, especially thanks to the ListLabels module. Good to keep in mind going forward.
November 1, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Reposted by Michael Kohl
matthegap.bsky.social
November 1, 2025 at 10:51 AM
citizen428.net
I’m currently halfway through season 3 of my #Babylon5 rewatch. A fascist president using a paramilitary organization and xenophobia to become dictator is not that different from watching the news though. This was supposed to be entertaining ☹️
November 1, 2025 at 9:28 AM
citizen428.net
Consistently being able to quickly output an image in the terminal turns out to be a major headache for people who use different terminal emulators on different systems. This zsh function is my current best attempt (code in alt text).

#terminal #productivity
A screenshot of the following ZSH function: function imgcat() { if [[ -n "$KITTY_OS" ]]; then # https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/kittens/icat/ kitten icat "$1" elif [[ -n "$WEZTERM_PANE" ]]; then # https://wezterm.org/imgcat.html wezterm imgcat "$1" elif [[ -n "$ITERM_SESSION_ID" ]]; then # https://iterm2.com/documentation-images.html, through timg timg -pi "$1" elif [[ -n "$GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR" ]]; then # Ghostty uses Kitty's protocol, which timg can output timg -pk "$1" else # If all else fails, try sixel timg -ps "$1" fi }
October 31, 2025 at 4:34 AM
citizen428.net
Space Exploration Logo Archive
https://spaceexplorationlogoarchive.webflow.io/
Space Exploration Logo Archive
Space Exploration Logo Archive
spaceexplorationlogoarchive.webflow.io
October 30, 2025 at 7:40 AM
citizen428.net
I like consistent colors in my terminal, and I like #OCaml, so I threw together a quick Nord color scheme for utop:

git.sr.ht/~citizen428/nord-utop
The following example code in a utop session show in the Nord colorscheme. # let rec sum = function | [] -> 0 | hd :: tl -> hd + sum tl;; val sum : int list -> int = <fun> # #show sum;; val sum : int list -> int # "Hello, " ^ "OCaml " ^ "World!";; - : string = "Hello, OCaml World!" # 1/0;; Exception: Division_by_zero. # 1 + "string";; Error: This constant has type string but an expression was expected of type int
October 29, 2025 at 5:52 PM
citizen428.net
3. F# — I have no specific need to target .NET, so I just use OCaml, even though I miss some F# features like active patterns
October 29, 2025 at 6:16 AM
citizen428.net
"What if the speed of sound were as fast as the speed of light?"

https://www.livescience.com/what-if-speed-of-sound-sped-up
What if the speed of sound were as fast as the speed of light?
Simultaneous thunder and lightning is only the beginning.
www.livescience.com
October 29, 2025 at 6:04 AM