> And there is not much to it, really.

The two use the same model but are organized differently so it throws me off a bit.

Re-frame chooses to hide the actual reduction step so instead of the big switch statement you have a bunch of registered event handlers, which are pure functions take the state and event and return the new state. The middleware is HoF around these so it's done per-handler as well as at the base reducer level, which turns out to be really good for code reuse.

> Is that the subscription mechanism? I have yet to find a use for it...

I think they call it selections. Reactions let you transform a normalized data model into a shape that's useful for the components. They also let you build up chains of reusable calculations/conditions to shift complex conditionals out of the components and into the model code so its co-located with the handlers, which are split up by the part of the app they work with (credentials, search, nav, etc).

This sounds like an interesting approach, though I'm not really fan of events (it's easy to see when they fire, but less easy to make sure anything is listening).