Alan Nichol
@alanmnichol.bsky.social
Co-founder@Rasa, doing chatbots since before they were good. Sharing takes I can't put on linkedin. Former physicist, wannabe chef, someday cuneiform translator.
Reposted by Alan Nichol
From Bronze Age Wales, the spectacular Mold Cape! 🤩
An incredible ancient feat of sheet-goldworking, beaten from a single gold ingot some 3,600 years ago!
The extraordinary embossed decoration is said to mimic strings of beads.
📷 by me
#FindsFriday
#Archaeology
An incredible ancient feat of sheet-goldworking, beaten from a single gold ingot some 3,600 years ago!
The extraordinary embossed decoration is said to mimic strings of beads.
📷 by me
#FindsFriday
#Archaeology
November 14, 2025 at 1:21 PM
From Bronze Age Wales, the spectacular Mold Cape! 🤩
An incredible ancient feat of sheet-goldworking, beaten from a single gold ingot some 3,600 years ago!
The extraordinary embossed decoration is said to mimic strings of beads.
📷 by me
#FindsFriday
#Archaeology
An incredible ancient feat of sheet-goldworking, beaten from a single gold ingot some 3,600 years ago!
The extraordinary embossed decoration is said to mimic strings of beads.
📷 by me
#FindsFriday
#Archaeology
My toddler knows the words “elbow”, “eyebrow”, and “apple”. She also pronounces them exactly the same way
October 27, 2025 at 10:36 AM
My toddler knows the words “elbow”, “eyebrow”, and “apple”. She also pronounces them exactly the same way
Reposted by Alan Nichol
Hi. I wrote an essay about AI slop: How it feels like an invasive species for the internet. How its boosters describe building a future that’s devoid of craft. How frictionlessness can be nihilistic & how this stuff seems to leach part of our shared humanity out of the world. I hope you'll read it.
AI’s Invasive Species
The slop is winning.
www.theatlantic.com
October 20, 2025 at 10:47 PM
Hi. I wrote an essay about AI slop: How it feels like an invasive species for the internet. How its boosters describe building a future that’s devoid of craft. How frictionlessness can be nihilistic & how this stuff seems to leach part of our shared humanity out of the world. I hope you'll read it.
Reposted by Alan Nichol
from my lunch today; "the trouble is not so much AI making you more productive, but that it's tripling the output of the biggest f***ing idiot where you work"
October 21, 2025 at 9:21 PM
from my lunch today; "the trouble is not so much AI making you more productive, but that it's tripling the output of the biggest f***ing idiot where you work"
Yes I’m looping you in to this conversation here’s a reverse-chronological list of past messages each wrapped with some boilerplate and older messages are at ever increasing levels of indentation.
How is email even real
How is email even real
October 15, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Yes I’m looping you in to this conversation here’s a reverse-chronological list of past messages each wrapped with some boilerplate and older messages are at ever increasing levels of indentation.
How is email even real
How is email even real
Think this is the first time slop has snuck in to my discover weekly. open.spotify.com/track/3eGrMm...
Juicy - 1950's Soul Version
open.spotify.com
October 13, 2025 at 8:22 AM
Think this is the first time slop has snuck in to my discover weekly. open.spotify.com/track/3eGrMm...
I used Siri to set a reminder to “go by Lupe Pinto’s” and I genuinely have no idea how it transcribed that correctly
October 7, 2025 at 4:44 PM
I used Siri to set a reminder to “go by Lupe Pinto’s” and I genuinely have no idea how it transcribed that correctly
In a world of slop posts having something to say is a radical act
October 7, 2025 at 1:08 PM
In a world of slop posts having something to say is a radical act
We’ve been trying to correct our toddler that her name is not, in fact, “you” and it’s quite the routine
October 3, 2025 at 1:08 PM
We’ve been trying to correct our toddler that her name is not, in fact, “you” and it’s quite the routine
In German they don’t say “professor of [subject]” they say professor FOR [subject] and it irks me every time I see it
October 3, 2025 at 11:23 AM
In German they don’t say “professor of [subject]” they say professor FOR [subject] and it irks me every time I see it
Can you think of a demonym for an island in the med ?
“Corsican”
“Corsican”
October 2, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Can you think of a demonym for an island in the med ?
“Corsican”
“Corsican”
Heard “AI slop” on bbc #wakeuptomoney this morning. Lads, we did it.
September 19, 2025 at 8:06 AM
Heard “AI slop” on bbc #wakeuptomoney this morning. Lads, we did it.
good point well made
most people’s criticisms of MCP are either bogus or misapplied, but one that i never hear and should is that it doesn’t standardize partial function application
if you visualize the server as a class, and tool as function, the “constructor args” aren’t standardized
they go in ENV, headers, etc.
if you visualize the server as a class, and tool as function, the “constructor args” aren’t standardized
they go in ENV, headers, etc.
September 9, 2025 at 10:27 AM
good point well made
to get promoted in tech, when you're out of your depth just say "we should be more strategic and less tactical". Boss move - makes it someone else's problem that you can't keep up.
September 8, 2025 at 1:58 PM
to get promoted in tech, when you're out of your depth just say "we should be more strategic and less tactical". Boss move - makes it someone else's problem that you can't keep up.
Great reporting by the FT but I would also read the hell out of 4K words on this written by an anthropologist in The Atlantic
September 5, 2025 at 10:18 AM
Great reporting by the FT but I would also read the hell out of 4K words on this written by an anthropologist in The Atlantic
So 🔥
I love when startups do research and just ship in product. Skip the benchmarking theatre.
I love when startups do research and just ship in product. Skip the benchmarking theatre.
Introducing Instinct 🐺, a new state-of-the-art open Next Edit model trained by @continue.dev
Runnable with @ollamabot.bsky.social and available today in VS Code
Runnable with @ollamabot.bsky.social and available today in VS Code
September 4, 2025 at 7:08 PM
So 🔥
I love when startups do research and just ship in product. Skip the benchmarking theatre.
I love when startups do research and just ship in product. Skip the benchmarking theatre.
Who would have thought that working from a building named after Thomas Bayes would expose me to so many nerdy maths t shirts
September 4, 2025 at 9:05 AM
Who would have thought that working from a building named after Thomas Bayes would expose me to so many nerdy maths t shirts
Pausing to appreciate that the success of a gigantic company and a generational consumer product rest on people adding and removing shit like this to a system prompt.
the GPT-5 system prompt explicitly says not to ask clarifying questions
i feel like we’re hitting the bitter lesson on theory of mind. they’re trying to fix every last behavior bug, except human preferences are blatantly contradictory, you simply need to understand the person
i feel like we’re hitting the bitter lesson on theory of mind. they’re trying to fix every last behavior bug, except human preferences are blatantly contradictory, you simply need to understand the person
September 2, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Pausing to appreciate that the success of a gigantic company and a generational consumer product rest on people adding and removing shit like this to a system prompt.
will get to explain to my kids that there were A LOT of years between the world becoming completely dependent on the internet and it being a safe bet that there will be wifi at an airport
August 28, 2025 at 5:48 PM
will get to explain to my kids that there were A LOT of years between the world becoming completely dependent on the internet and it being a safe bet that there will be wifi at an airport
getting unreasonably annoyed at the way the tech industry uses the word 'funnel'.
Have you ever used a funnel? did it discard 80% of the material? No. You're thinking of a sieve.
Have you ever used a funnel? did it discard 80% of the material? No. You're thinking of a sieve.
August 26, 2025 at 1:06 PM
getting unreasonably annoyed at the way the tech industry uses the word 'funnel'.
Have you ever used a funnel? did it discard 80% of the material? No. You're thinking of a sieve.
Have you ever used a funnel? did it discard 80% of the material? No. You're thinking of a sieve.
wild how some weeks Discover Weekly is filled with bangers I've never heard before, and some weeks it's just dogshit.
August 25, 2025 at 9:11 AM
wild how some weeks Discover Weekly is filled with bangers I've never heard before, and some weeks it's just dogshit.
crushing my Q3 KPIs (eating as much stone fruit as I can)
August 21, 2025 at 9:21 AM
crushing my Q3 KPIs (eating as much stone fruit as I can)