Wumpus Feed https://wumpus.life/ en Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:51:25 -0400 Emacs 30.2 org-publish-rss.el 0.6 Alec Barreto Alec Barreto Hiding Buffers in Emacs https://wumpus.life/posts/hiding-buffers-in-emacs.html Fri, 09 May 2025 00:00:00 -0400 7091b6ce-2aeb-45c6-ab5c-827e398aded1 Emacs users can quickly become overwhelmed by the large amount of buffers which accumulate. Many of these are ancillary buffers created by various packages which govern aspects of the package, such as logging or process management. Some of these can be killed, but usually it's a good idea (or even necessary) to keep them around.

These ancillary buffers come in 2 flavors:

  1. The ones you never want to see
  2. The ones you occasionally want to see

1. Buffers You Never Want to See

In the first case, Emacs by default considers buffers with names starting with a space to be hidden. So renaming a buffer using rename-buffer (C-x x r) to something with a leading space will mark the buffer as hidden. This means that the buffer will not be completed/listed by commands such as switch-to-buffer and ido-switch-buffer. It also won't be selected by previous-buffer (C-x <left>) or next-buffer (C-x <right>).

This is a fairly drastic measure, as the only real way to manually switch to a buffer hidden like this is by either typing its name precisely after calling something like switch-to-buffer, or using a package like consult and calling consult-buffer SPC.

2. Buffers You Occasionally Want to See

2.1. Basics

In the second case, for buffers which you don't want to get in your way when switching between buffers quickly but do occasionally want to pull up, we have the variable switch-to-prev-buffer-skip (and its regexp cousin). This variable determines whether or not previous-buffer and next=buffer (and their cousins) will switch to a given buffer when it's "next" on the list. It can take on a few specific values, but in the general case it points to a predicate function of the buffer being switched to.

For example: 

(defun buffer-skip-p (_window buffer _bury-or-kill)
  (with-current-buffer buffer
    (eq major-mode 'rust-mode)))

(setopt switch-to-prev-buffer-skip 'buffer-skip-p)

Here we define a function which takes in a window, buffer, and whether or not to bury-or-kill the buffer being switched to. It then evaluates to t whenever the major mode of the buffer is rust-mode. Finally, we set switch-to-prev-buffer-skip to our function's symbol. Now, whenever we call e.g. next-buffer, it will look up and call this function, and if it returns t because the mode of the buffer is rust-mode, it will not switch to it, but instead to whatever the next buffer on the list is which this function would return nil on (phew!).

Not that this variable does not affect functions like switch-to-buffer or ido-switch-buffer.

Note also the function signature. It expects 3 parameters, so it can incorporate info from the window or the bury-or-kill status in order to determine whether or not the buffer should be skipped. The example above simply disregards that info.

2.2. Polish

This is all well and good, but there might not a be semantic rule that all buffers which you want to keep quasi-hidden obey. You may instead have a bespoke list of buffers specific to your packages and how you use them which you want to hide. But this is easy enough to do with swtch-to-prev-buffer-skip.

Consider: 

(defvar hidden-buffers '("blazing-webapp.rs" "rocket-cli.rs"))

(defun buffer-skip-p (_window buffer _bury-or-kill)
  (member (buffer-name buffer) hidden-buffers))

Here we simply declare a list of "hidden" buffers by their names as strings, and have buffer-skip-p check if the given buffer's name is in the list. Now we can hide any buffers we want!

A couple of QOL improvements would be a method for quickly adding buffers to this list, and a way to ensure that this list var persists across emacs sessions.

Here is the final setup with these extra niceties1: 

(defvar hidden-buffers '())

(with-eval-after-load 'savehist
  (add-to-list 'savehist-additional-variables hidden-buffers))

(defun hidden-buffer-p (_window buffer _bury-or-kill)
  (member (buffer-name buffer) hidden-buffers))

(setopt switch-to-prev-buffer-skip 'hidden-buffer-p)

(defun hide-buffer ()
  (interactive)
  (cl-pushnew (buffer-name) hidden-buffers
              :test #'string=))

(defun unhide-buffer ()
  (interactive)
  (setq hidden-buffers (remove (buffer-name) hidden-buffers)))

(keymap-global-set "C-c b h" 'hide-buffer)
(keymap-global-set "C-c b u" 'unhide-buffer)

Now, whenever we find ourselves in a buffer we'd rather not deal with during our regular emacs-ing, we can simply call C-c b h to hide the buffer by name. If we decide that a buffer has been neglected for too long, we can switch to it with something like switch-to-buffer, and unhide it with C-c b u.

3. Conclusion

This totally changed how I do buffer management, from exclusively relying on switch-to-buffer + completion packages like vertico and orderless, to actually binding next-buffer and previous-buffer to nice keys and using them liberally to quickly jump around only the most relevant buffers.

I hope you found this helpful! You can find my entire emacs config here

Footnotes:

1

Thanks to u/789yuiop for helping clean up this code.

]]> What Might Functional Programming Mean https://wumpus.life/posts/functional-programming.html Thu, 09 Oct 2025 00:00:00 -0400 14f76930-b6b8-4b65-babb-bceab8a255bf There are many arguments about the virtues and vices of functional programming. But it can be difficult to find an agreed upon meaning of the phrase. Here, I want to explore some of the most common characteristics of functional programming that I've seen floating around, and discuss each of them in turn, with the ultimate question in mind: how much should we care about them? In particular, I want to see if there's really an argument to be made for preferring these characteristics absolutely over competing ones, if they are useful at all.

TLDR0

I want to know what functional programming is, and if it's a good thing.

Programming with Functions

One of the oldest and most popular understandings of functional programming is that it's, well, programming with functions!

In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by applying and composing functions.

—Wikipedia

Of course this statement is worthless on its own, as all computer programming "paradigms" with names involve applying and composing functions. Instead, the key idea is to treat functions as proper data objects. That is, as things that can be bound to variables, passed as arguments to other functions, and returned as values from other functions. This is called treating functions as first-class citizens, and is the first real innovation in the tradition that would come to be known as functional programming, when it was first introduced by Lisp at MIT starting in the late 1950s.

Functions as First-Class Citizens

However, treating functions as first class citizens, like "programming with functions", is too broad! There are two questions one could ask:

  1. Am I able to treat functions as first-class citizens?
  2. Do I want to treat functions as first-class citizens?

Power

For (1), the answer is entirely determined by the programming language one is using. Although it was a novelty 60 years ago, many programming languages which are widely considered to be not functional have support for first class functions. So while affirming (1) is almost certainly a necessary condition for functional programming, it is not sufficient.

Desire

Perhaps then functional programming is about absolutely affirming (2). To be doing functional programming is to be always either binding a function to a variable, or calling a function which returns a function, or passing a function in as an argument to another function, or some combination thereof. But this is of course ridiculous, as there are many other things you do while programming which involve none of these things, even in the most pure functional programming languages. The most obvious ones being either binding a non-function value to a variable, or returning a non-function value from a function.1

All that's left then is not to affirm (2) absolutely, but rather conditionally. That is, to be doing functional programming is to sometimes treat functions as values (including using a language which facilitates such). But this is another widely held belief, which is evidenced by the widespread adoption of the capability at the language level in more recent years, again even in languages which are considered to be not functional, and utilized by those who don't consider themselves to be doing anything like "functional programming".

TLDR1

Functional Programming as "treating functions as first class citizens" is at best something which is sometimes useful to do, and is a non-controversial practice.

No Side Effects

Perhaps the most popular (yet least interesting) description of functional programming is that it is programming without side effects. Here a "side effect", which should just be called an effect, is anything that a piece of code causes to happen. Since the point of writing computer programs is to cause computers to do things, trying to write a computer program which does nothing is all but nonsensical. I think that is enough that needs to be said about this idea, but since it is so widely discussed, I will say more.

Alternatives

There is one slightly more reasonable, and two much more reasonable, opinions which people often mean when they talk about no side effects:

  1. There are no references to side effects in the language specification
    • An implementation of that language may perform side effects when it processes certain expressions
  2. Side effects are dangerous and so we should be careful about how we use them
  3. All data structures in the language are immutable

I will discuss (3) in the next section.

Language Specification

As for (1), it's hard for me to imagine why anyone would care about this. All programs are free from side effects in the abstract, and all programs have side effects in reality when run on a computer. The fact that a programming language spec doesn't allow you to express the idea of an effect doesn't change either of these facts. You still have to deal with side effects when you actually run it, and you can still ignore side effects when abstractly reasoning about it. There are perhaps some intellectually interesting properties of languages which don't reference side effects, but here I am discussing functional programming as a paradigm, not functional programming language theory.

Caution

Finally for (2), this seems very reasonable, but again has become a widely held belief amongst programmers in general, not just functional advocates. However here I do believe that there is still a gap, as the ramifications of undisciplined employment of effectful procedures is sometimes not fully appreciated by those with no exposure to functional programming.

TLDR2

Functional programming as "programming without side effects" is nonsense, but recognizing the dangers of side effects is helpful, which is mostly non-controversial.

Immutable Data

We have now arrived at what I consider to be the most reasonable and important sense in which functional programming is worth talking about. The absolutist version of the idea is simple: you should never mutate data. This usually means that the programming language itself should support this by offering no primitives for mutation, thus making all data structures immutable.

This is a genuinely controversial idea which actually has the promise of being worthwhile, as it is already the case in a few programming languages. The only widely used languages for general purpose programming with this quality that I am aware of are Haskell and Erlang/Elixir.

The most obvious benefit of this is that it is easier to reason about code when you don't have to worry about the "current" state of any internal data.

When I'm sitting down to do what I consider serious programming, it's still in C++, and it's really kind of a C flavored C++ at that.
…
There is a lot of value [in functional programming] in the way you think about things… the value that comes out of not having this random mutable state that you kind of lose track of.

—John Carmack

The Rub

There are minor potential downsides, such as performance, which I won't discuss here. Rather, I wish to discuss what I see as the only candidate for a fundamental downside.

When we write computer programs, we often want to model some part of the world. Since part of our goal when writing computer programs is always to change the state of the world, it often seems useful to reify those mutable parts of the world in our program. And the fact that they are mutable is not an incidental property we can ignore, but essential to the problem at hand.2

So it seems that we lose a kind of expressive power with immutable data structures. This is especially evident in areas such as graphical programming, where it can be difficult to imagine not modeling graphical objects as those with states that change over time. But even here there has been work to come up with functional paradigms, albeit with no obvious grand success of which I am aware.

TLDR3

Functional programming as "programming exclusively with immutable data" is an interesting and still yet-to-be widely accepted approach to programming which is worth talking about. The dangers of undisciplined data mutation are widely known and non-controversial.

Pure Functions

Finally we have by far the most complex idea in functional programming, yet also one of the most useless. The idea is that all functions you write/use should be "pure" functions. There are at least 4 different properties people tend to bring up when talking about pure functions:

  1. No side effects
  2. No mutation
  3. Only looks at arguments
  4. Same input <—> Same output

We have already discussed (1) and (2).

Only Arguments

(3) is terribly misleading, funnily because of not taking seriously the idea of functions as values. It is virtually impossible to write a function which only looks at its arguments. Consider the following function definition: 

(define square
  (lambda (x)
    (* x x)))

There is a non-local reference here: *!
Every function consists of references to non-local data. What makes the above code actually "transparent" to reason about is lexical scoping. That is, the fact that the value which is bound to * within the scope of the function cannot be changed outside the scope of the function after its definition. Note that immutability also makes a difference here, because it ensures that there is no time attached to this definition. If there were mutation in the language of the above code, mutating the value of * before the definition is made could cause confusion.

Input <—> Output

That leaves us with (4). But we obviously don't want all functions to return the same value given the same arguments + environment, because we would like to read in data from the outside world. So we can't take an absolutist stance to (4), only a conditional one. But that functions should generally return the same thing given the same arguments is widely agreed upon.

Therefore, talking about pure functions either reduces to talking about something else (like immutability or side effects), or is pointless/trivial.

TLDR4

Functional programming as "programming with pure functions" is a useless notion.

Conclusion

Most of the traditional qualities of functional programming have been adopted by programmers and programming languages which both functional and non-functional advocates alike agree are not functional in nature.

The only exception to this I see is the still seemingly contested approach to (im)mutable data. The idea that immutability is the core of functional programming goes back all the way to at least the 1970s3, and so has historical legitimacy as well. Therefore, I believe that talking about functional programming as immutable programming is the most clear and sensible approach to the subject.

Bath Water

In addition to this, most if not all of the other ideas discussed in this article are related to each other. It is difficult to program with immutable data without first-class functions, and it is easier to control side effects with immutable data. Thus I don't think there is any need to censor speech about these other qualities in relation to functional programming. But, rather than talking about them as part of a constellation of functional qualities, we should instead speak of them as the branches of a tree rooted in the idea of immutability.

Loose Ends

Finally, there are a few other things people bring up when talking about functional programming, such as:

  • Pattern Matching
  • Recursion / Tail Call Optimization
  • Lazy Evaluation
  • Type Systems

and more. However, these are all potential concrete features of a programming language, not a programming paradigm. I would classify them similarly to everything which is not immutable data that we've already discussed: things which pair nicely with functional programming.

TLDR5

Functional programming is immutable programming, which makes it very cool 😎.

Footnotes:

1

We are definitely ignoring philosophical questions about identity and constructs like lambda encodings.

2

For a more in-depth discussion of these ideas, see Structure and Interpretations of Computer Programs chapter 3.

3

Again, see SICP.

]]> Pacific NW Road Trip Travels https://wumpus.life/posts/pacific-nw-road-trip-travels.html Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0400 8b0ab603-ecfc-40e4-9e16-e7cf5e93bdf4 Hey! My name is Grace, and this documents my road trip in the Pacific NW with my boyfriend Alec. This will highlight our favorite hikes, camp sites, activities, and food stops along our journey.

Washington

North Cascades National Park

Thunder Knobb Trail

We started our journey by flying into Seattle, renting a campervan, and driving up to the North Cascades.

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Figure 1: Arriving in the North Cascades!

We spent our first night at North Colonial Creek Campground, which is a beautiful camp on the water. In the morning we hiked the Thunder Knobb Trail, which left directly from our campsite. The hike took around 1.5 hours. First, we climbed up to an outlook of a snowy tipped mountain.

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Figure 2: Thunder Knobb Trail Outlook 1

Then, we kept going up to end the hike at a beautiful view of the very light blue Diablo Lake.

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Figure 3: Reaching the Diablo Lake Outlook

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Figure 4: Diablo Lake Outlook

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Figure 5: Another Scenic Shot of Diablo Lake

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Figure 6: One Last Shot of Diablo Lake

This hike was short and sweet with great views! We loved the convenience of it leaving from our campsite, and it was a great way to start the morning off.

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Figure 7: Photo from North Colonial Creek Campground

Blue Lakes Trail

We hiked the Blue Lakes Trail in mid-June. The trail was beautiful, but it was still quite snow covered. If you don't have snow gear, I would recommend holding off on this trail until July or August. This trail is a steady climb to a beautiful blue lake with reflected views of the mountains. However, right before we reached the final viewpoint of the trail, we saw a mountain goat on the trail. He started to follow us, so we turned back before reaching the final viewpoint to avoid any potential issues with the mountain goat. We learned from other hikers on our return that this mountain goat is friendly and frequents the trail often because people have been feeding him. We quite enjoyed this trail and the opportunity to see a mountain goat. We would love to return to this trail in July or August for a less snowy hike and for a chance to make it to the final viewpoint.

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Figure 8: The Mountain Goat on the Blue Lakes Trail

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Figure 9: Scenic Shot on the Hike Up

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Figure 10: Hiking Up the Trail

North Cascades Scenic Highway

To finish up our time in the North Cascades, we drove the North Cascades Scenic Highway for some great views. We then followed the highway out of the park and to our next stop.

Winthrop

Winthrop is a super cute old fashioned style town just outside of the North Cascades. We stopped here to walk around, check out the outdoors store, stop in the candy store, and grab a bite to eat. We had lunch at Oliver's Artisan Kitchen, which had great sandwiches, crepes, and hot chocolate (which was especially needed after our snowy hike on the Blue Lake Trail).

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Figure 11: Photo with the Winthrop Cowboy

Winthrop was our last stop in the North Cascades. The North Cascades was our favorite National Park in Washington, and we would love to come back and do more of the hikes it has to offer.

Olympic National Park

Lake Quinault

Olympic National Park is a very large and diverse national park. We used the GuideAlong app to help navigate our time in Olympic. We started our trip at Lake Quinault where we did a short rainforest nature walk and then drove a scenic loop around Lake Quinault. Our rainforest walk was called the Rainforest Nature Trail, and we would say it's definitely worth a stop. The scenic drive around the Lake was nice, and we did pop out for a scenic waterfall stop. However, the road around the lake had a lot of potholes, which was a bit hard on our campervan, so we do not plan to return to this drive.

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Figure 12: Rainforest Nature Walk

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Figure 13: Scenic Stop by a Waterfall on the Lake Quinault Scenic Loop

Tree of Life

After Lake Quinault, we drove toward the shore and made a stop at Kalaloch Beach to see the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life had all the soil beneath it blown out by a big storm, so it appears to be suspended in mid-air. We thought this was a fun stop to make.

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Figure 14: The Tree of Life

Ruby Beach

We continued along the coast until we hit Ruby Beach, which was a nice lunch stop. We stopped at an overlook before walking down to the beach and appreciating the cool rock formations by the shore.

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Figure 15: Ruby Beach Overlook

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Figure 16: Rock Arch at Ruby Beach

Hoh Rainforest

We started our time in the Hoh Rainforest at the Hall of Mosses. This was a short loop that was very popular, but it was a great way to see lots of large trees that were dramatically draped in moss.

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Figure 17: Trail to the Hall of Mosses

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Figure 18: Traveling Through the Hall of Mosses

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Figure 19: Final Viewpoint in the Hall of Mosses

Next, we started along the Hoh River Trail. This trail is 17.3 miles long and is intended for a short backpacking trip to Glacier Meadows. The trail was very muddy, so make sure to bring waterproof shoes if you make this journey. We hiked just a bit into the trail, but we would love to come back and do this one as a backpacking trip.

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Figure 20: Cool Tree Along the Way

Olympic Adventure Campgrounds

After Traveling up from Lake Quinault to the Hoh Rainforest, we spent the night at Olympic Adventure Campgrounds, which we booked through HipCamp. The campsite had a cute center where you could buy firewood and souvenirs. The campsites were surrounded by trees, and the campsite offered hot showers for five dollars.

Rialto Beach

The next morning we drove just 20 minutes to Rialto Beach, and then, we walked along the shore. We loved seeing the cool rock formations along the beach.

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Figure 21: Rock Formations at Rialto Beach

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Figure 22: Walking Along the Shore

Forks, Washington

After Rialto Beach, we went into Forks to check out the Twilight Collection. However, the Twilight Collection does not open till 12:00 PM in the summer, so we instead went to the Twilight themed gift store across the street.

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Figure 23: Welcome to Forks!

Hurricane Ridge

Next, we drove up to Hurricane Ridge. The drive was steep and foggy (from driving in the clouds!), but the view at the top of Hurricane Ridge was well worth it. We were blown away by the amazing alpine views and we loved hiking on the Meadow Trails. This was our favorite area of the park, and we would love to come back for longer to do some more of the hikes in this area.

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Figure 24: Hiking Along the Meadow Trails

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Figure 25: Viewpoint from the Meadow Trails

Coho Campground

Coho Campground is located in Olympic National Forest and was booked through Recreation.gov. It was a very scenic campground where you could walk to the water and were surrounded by mossy trees. Olympic National Park was a great time where we saw rainforests, beaches, and alpine views. The park is very large and the drive between stops was not as scenic. We appreciated how many different sites we were able to see while at Olympic, but if we come back to Olympic in the future, we would probably concentrate our time in a specific area of the park to reduce driving time. We especially would like to spend more time in Hurricane Ridge. We did not get a chance to visit the Sol Duc Valley, Elwha Valley, or the Dungeness Spit, so we may also add those in as stops on a future trip.

Mount Rainier National Park

Eatonville

We started our trip to Mount Rainier by driving into Eatonville, which is a small town with a great view of Mount Rainier. While in Eatonville, we stopped at the Double T Meats to get some delicious garlic pepperoni for our trip. We then explored the town and stopped at Cruiser Cafe for some great fried potato skins and fries with gravy.

Two Frog Bog

We loved camping at the Two Frog Bog. They have tents set up for you or you can stay in a decorated small cabin. There is a public kitchen, showers, hammocks, a garden, and a group fire pit. The hot water in the showers is a little finicky and showering in the morning has optimal hot water. The parking was limited, but otherwise, this was a great site with lots to offer. There is also a very friendly cat who loves pets.

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Figure 26: The Friendly Cat at Two Frog Bog

Summerland Trail

We originally planned to hike the Naches Peak Loop, but the trail was completely covered in snow and was hard to follow. We would love to come back to do this trail in July or August. We instead ended up doing the Summerland Trail, which climbed steadily up to great mountain views and river overlooks.

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Figure 27: Summerland Trail View 1

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Figure 28: Summerland Trail View 2

Enumclaw

On the way out of Mount Rainier, we stopped in Enumclaw where we found the Local Coffee House, which had amazing lattes and great donut holes. We had a great time visiting Mount Rainier, and we would love to come back to see more of the trails in July or August.

Oregon

Stopping for Donuts in Portland

Portland is famous for its donuts, and we stopped at two spots to see if the donuts lived up to the hype. First, we stopped at Pip's Donuts and Chai. Pip's had many flavors of mini donuts; we especially liked their seasonal strawberry rhubarb mini donut. We also tried the chocolate chai, which was filled with sweet chai and chocolate flavors. Next, we headed to Blue Star Donuts, which is known for making delicious brioche donuts in unique flavors. We tried the Old-Fashioned Buttermilk, the O.G., and the Chocolate Bergamon Old-Fashioned. We thought that all the flavors were great! My favorite was the Chocolate Bergamon Old-Fashioned, and Alec's favorite was the Old-Fashioned Buttermilk.

The Fruit Loop

On the way to the Fruit Loop, we saw signs for Multnomah falls. They were sold out of passes for the day we were driving through, but we would like to add this as a stop another time. The Fruit Loop is a loop of 32 fruit stands, wineries, cideries, and farms situated between beautiful mountains. First, we stopped at Pearl's Place Fruit Stand where we bought some Mount Rainier cherries and apples. We especially loved the cherries! We also stopped at the White House where we enjoyed a White House Burger for lunch, and we did U-pick for blueberries and raspberries. We also stopped at Fox Tail Cider and Distillery where Alec got a flight of ciders to try. Then, we continued on to Packer Orchards, which had a beautiful outdoor seating area with a view. Packer Orchards also had a big table with tons of samples of their jams, sauces, honeys, and canned vegetables. Then, we walked through the store to see their baked goods and other treats. We bought a bottle of their non-alcoholic Pear Cider, and it was amazing. Our last stop on the Fruit Loop was Draper Girls Country Farm where we bought some peaches. Then, we admired the stunning view and cute swing in their outdoor seating area.

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Figure 29: View Along the Fruit Loop

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Figure 30: U-pick at the White House

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Figure 31: U-pick at the White House

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Figure 32: View at the White House

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Figure 33: Alec's Flight of Ciders

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Figure 34: View from Draper Girls Country Farm

Mount Hood National Forest

Camp Creek

We then spent the night in Mount Hood National Forest at Camp Creek, which was just 10 minutes from our hike for tomorrow. The Camp Creek Campground was very scenic, and there was a creek trail that leaves straight from the camp. However, it should be noted that the amenities at Camp Creek are very sparse. Be sure to bring plenty of potable water when camping here.

Tom, Dick, and Harry Mountain Trail

This was one of our favorite hikes of the trip! First, the trail takes you to the lovely Mirror Lake. Then, you can continue up toward the Tom, Dick, and Harry Mountains. There were some good views along the climb up, but the final view of Mount Hood at the end of the hike really took our breath away.

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Figure 35: View on the Hike Up

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Figure 36: Final Viewpoint

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Figure 37: Final Viewpoint

The Last Blockbuster

Next, we drove through Bend, Oregon to see the last Blockbuster open. This was a very nostalgic stop for Alec, and it was a great place to get some candy, look through movies, and buy some Blockbuster merchandise.

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Figure 38: The Last Blockbuster

Diamond Lake

We camped at Diamond Lake, which is quite close to Crater Lake. The lake and mountain were very striking, and the campsite had many marmots out and about. This was also the only Recreation.gov campsite we stayed in that provided showers.

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Figure 39: Marmot at Diamond Lake

Crater Lake National Park

The majority of Crater Lake was closed in June. However, we were able to drive up to Rim Village where we walked along the Rim and stopped to take scenic photos. Then, we were able to drive to Discovery Point where we did a short 2.2 mile hike to a nice view of the lake. We thought that the lake was stunning and enjoyed being able to take in the views. If we come back to Crater Lake, we would like to come in July or August when more of the park is open, and we would like to hike down to the lake.

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Figure 40: Taking in the Views at Crater Lake

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Figure 41: Walking by Rim Village

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Figure 42: View from Hike by Discovery Point

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Figure 43: Another View from the Hike by Discovery Point

California

Redwoods National Park

Trees of Mystery

This was a cute park where you can see some labeled redwoods, walk on an elevated canopy trail of the redwoods, take a gondola, and go on a short nature hike. We thought that it was a fun stop, and our favorite part was the elevated canopy trail. We will probably skip it if we visit the redwoods again, but it was a great one time stop.

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Figure 44: Elevated Canopy Trail

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Figure 45: Another Look at the Elevated Canopy Trail

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Figure 46: Checking out the Redwoods

Lady Bird Johnson Trail

This short trail was great for experiencing the redwoods and learning more about the history of the park.

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Figure 47: Redwoods at Lady Bird Johnson Trail

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Figure 48: Enjoying the Redwoods

Terwer RV Park

This was a great place to stay that was close to the redwoods. The host was very friendly. They had plentiful firewood, hot showers, a sink for washing dishes, and electrical hookups for charging devices.

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Figure 49: Cooking Hot Dogs at Terwer RV Park

Lassen Volcanic National Park

Manzanita Lake Campground

It was very nice to camp by Manzanita Lake. From the campground, you can walk to the Manzanita Lake trailhead and the Manzanita Creek trailhead. The campground had nice bathrooms, a sink for washing dishes, and was a 5 minute walk from a camp store where you can buy food, coffee, and firewood. The camp store was partially under construction, but it will soon offer showers and laundry as well.

Chaos Craggs Trail

This was a fantastic hike! We would highly recommend it. The terrain was moderately challenging, but the view at the end was well worth it.

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Figure 50: Approaching the Final Viewpoint

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Figure 51: Chaos Craggs Final Viewpoint

Manzanita Lake Trail

We did this loop at sunset and enjoyed great views of the setting sun lighting up Mount Lassen. However, this trail was very buggy!

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Figure 52: Manzanita Lake Trail at Sunset

Manzanita Creek Trail

This trail was longer, but the elevation gain was gradual. It had nice views of the mountains throughout. The trail got muddy toward the end and was not as well marked, so we were not quite sure what the final viewpoint of the trail was supposed to be.

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Figure 53: Mountain Views on the Manzanita Creek Trail

Devastated Area

There is a 0.5 mile loop around the Devastated Area where you can view the volcanic rocks and learn about Mount Lassen's last eruption. There is also a nice view of Mount Lassen from the trail.

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Figure 54: View of Mount Lassen from the Devastated Area Trail

King Creek Falls Trail

This is a nice hike through some burnt forestland and down to King Creek Falls. The hike back up from the falls is steep, but otherwise the trail is an easy hike.

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Figure 55: King Creek Falls

Lake Helen

We stopped by Lake Helen for striking views of the mountain and the frozen lake. The water was a bright light blue.

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Figure 56: Lake Helen

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Figure 57: Alec at Lake Helen

Sulfur Works

We then went to Sulfur Works to see bubbling mud pots and geothermal activity.

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Figure 58: Sulfur Works

We had originally planned to see more geothermal activity on the Bumpass Hell Trail, but this trail was still closed for snow. We would like to come and see this trail in July or August.

Shasta-Trinity National Forest

Old Shasta Coffee

This was a great coffee stop on our way into Shasta! The iced oat latte was excellent.

Castle Lake Trail

This was one of our favorite hikes of the trip! We hiked past Castle Lake and then past Little Castle Lake. We ended with amazing views of Mount Shasta and Castle Lake. The final viewpoint had a couch made out of rock that was a great place to have a snack and take in the view.

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Figure 59: The Rock Couch at the End of the Trail

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Figure 60: The View of Mount Shasta

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Figure 61: The View of Mount Shasta and Castle Lake

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Figure 62: The Final Viewpoint

Bailey Cove Campgrounds

This was a great place to camp that was right on Lake Shasta. A short trail leaves from the campsite, and the campsite is right next to a boat dock.

Shasta Caverns

The Shasta Caverns were just 6 minutes down the road from Bailey Cove Campgrounds. We took a boat across Lake Shasta, and then, we took a scenic bus ride to the caverns. The tour of the caverns was very impressive. We learned a lot about different cave formations and the history of the Shasta Cave.

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Figure 63: Shasta Caverns Formations

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Figure 64: Final Room in the Shasta Caverns Tour

Livermore Wine Country

The Ranch at Cross Road

This was a very nice campground on a farm that was close to many vineyards. We had rolling hills in the background. There was also a nice bathroom with a shower. The shower's water pressure was a bit low, but it was an open roof shower, which was cool to try.

Del Valle Winery

We went to the winery for dinner and drinks on a Friday night. There was great live music. We really enjoyed the charcuterie, flatbread, and Sauvignon Blanc here.

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Figure 65: Del Valle Winery

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Figure 66: Another View of Del Valle Winery

San Francisco

Berkeley Rose Garden

This is a very beautiful outdoor rose garden that was nice to walk through.

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Figure 67: Roses

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Figure 68: Visiting the Rose Garden

Kinda Izakaya

This was a great dinner spot very close to Berkeley. We all shared a lychee soju cocktail pitcher. Grace liked the salmon and ikura bowl, and Alec enjoyed the hand rolls.

Caravaggio Gelato

This spot had very good gelato that was very reminiscent of Italy. Grace especially liked the affogato.

See's Candies

This was a very cute spot with delicious chocolate. We especially liked the California brittle.

Chinatown

We walked through Chinatown and stopped at Chong Qing Xiao Mian for lunch. Grace had a great wonton soup there, and Alec liked the pork belly and potstickers.

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Figure 69: Entrance to Chinatown

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Figure 70: Walking the Streets of Chinatown

City Lights Books

This was a very cute bookstore with tons of selection and great ambiance.

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Figure 71: City Lights Books

Pier 39

Pier 39 was a great spot on the water with tons of shops and food. We stopped at the Candy Barron to see their wide range of salt water taffies. We also watched the sea lions playing by the pier.

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Figure 72: Visiting Pier 39

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Figure 73: Sea Lion at Pier 39

Musee Mecanique

This was a super fun museum that is filled with old arcade games. It is helpful to bring cash to exchange for quarters. We spent about two hours here just exploring and playing the games.

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Figure 74: Musee Mechanique

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Figure 75: Exploring the Museum

Taking the Ferry

We had a great time and had nice views taking the ferry into the Ferry Station. At the ferry station, we ate at A16 for lunch. They had great pizza and Italian style sandwiches.

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Figure 76: View from the Ferry

Taking the Trolley

We found it a lot of fun to take one of the historic trolleys around town. To avoid the crowds, try to not take the trolley when going to a particularly touristy place.

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Figure 77: On the Trolley!

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Figure 78: Heading Around Town

Ghirardelli Square

Ghirardelli Square is home to the first Ghirardelli store. We enjoyed visiting the store and sharing fun sundaes.

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Figure 79: Ghirardelli Sundaes

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Figure 80: In Front of the Ghirardelli Store

California Academy of Sciences and the Japanese Tea Garden

We walked around the California Academy of Sciences. We especially liked seeing their indoor rainforest and their aquarium. After we finished at the museum, it was a short walk to the Japanese Tea Garden where we enjoyed some tea and walked around the peaceful garden. We especially liked climbing the arched bridge.

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Figure 81: The Indoor Rainforest

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Figure 82: The Aquarium

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Figure 83: At the Tea House

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Figure 84: Japanese Tea Garden

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Figure 85: Climbing the Arched Bridge

Crissy Field

We enjoyed the walking path at Crissy Field. It was close to the shore and had a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a bit foggy on the day we went, but we still greatly enjoyed the walk.

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Figure 86: View from Crissy Field Walk

]]> First Post! https://wumpus.life/posts/first-post.html Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0400 3be18520-8112-4d4b-9608-07ed21540095 You made it to the end! If the blog is still nascent then that probably wasn't so bad, but otherwise thanks!

breakfast.avif

]]> Structuralism in the Philosophy of Science https://wumpus.life/posts/structuralism-in-science.html Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:00:00 -0500 e664bf8b-56aa-44a1-b2d4-03599853fb90 Structural Realism is an attitude towards realisms of all flavours which puts structures front and center. A structure is usually an object which encodes relational data about some other objects. Note that structures themselves do not necessarily presuppose anything ontological about these "other" objects; structures are generically schematic.

If you read introductory material on structuralism as an approach to scientific realism, you will encounter different ideas which are often sloppily interchanged:

  1. Mild Scientific Structuralism
    • Science reveals to us some of the structural features of the natural world
  2. Ordinary Scientific Structuralism
    • Science reveals to us the structural features of the natural world
  3. Radical Scientific Structuralism
    • Science reveals to us the structural features of the world

Note that all of these positions have epistemic and ontic flavours.

(3) is most clearly out of place, as it brings the issue of naturalism into a debate where it does not belong. And yet the conflation of (2) and (3) is present in the Wikipedia1, SEP2, and IEP3 articles on the subject (as well as many casual online conversations by those who should know better). That science tells us about the natural world is almost a tautology, but that the natural word is identical to the world itself is a very different claim which has nothing to do with structuralism (and maybe not even with realism).

Whether or not distinguishing (1) and (2) is meaningful will depend on how one cashes out the notion of structure, and perhaps also the notion of science itself, but I believe it is a distinction which should at least be acknowledged. In particular, some characterizations of structures say that they are mathematical in nature, and so long as science can talk about mathematical objects it can talk about structures. Thus the idea of a structure of the natural world which is immune to scientific analysis would be nonsensical. On the other hand, it might be the case that not all structures are mathematical, but also that science can talk about more than just mathematical structures. With this view one could claim that science can talk about all natural structures, but this would have to be argued for.

A serious example of (1) is the organic philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.4 Whitehead was both a scientific realist and a naturalist. I would argue he was also a structuralist (or a proto-structuralist) due to his belief in the deeply relational nature of the world. However, he did not believe that scientific theories were the ultimate or complete theories of reality, as it was the job of metaphysics to provide those. But in his own metaphysical scheme, all phenomena are structural (relational) in nature, and so since science is talking about those phenomena, it tells us exclusively structural facts about the world. But importantly, those scientific facts do not exhaust the world.5

I think that talking about structuralism in science as though it were necessarily a kind of materialism is both misleading and hinders its possible applications to and integrations with other schools of thought.

Footnotes:

1 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism_(philosophy_of_science)
2 
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structural-realism
3 
https://iep.utm.edu/scientific-realism-antirealism
4 
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whitehead#Meta
5

Here I am talking about science roughly as we understand it, not necessarily how Whitehead understood it, i.e. Whitehead did not believe structures (qua relations) were inherently mathematical, but he might have believed there was ideally a more continuous relationship between e.g. physics and metaphysics than is presented here (though certaintly not the actual physics of his day and probably not even of ours)

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