I'm confused though. I don't ever see a response from Bram saying "merged this". Instead you see a constant stream of patches merged at the root of the mailing

I'm confused though. I don't ever see a response from Bram saying "merged this". Instead you see a constant stream of patches merged at the root of the mailing list. So I don't think you can look for his response in the mailing list for a submission if it was merged or not. You have to look at the stream of merged patches.