Spending a lot more time on Bluesky from now on. Handle is @maggieappleton.com. Might still x-post occasionally, but most of the people I enjoy interacting with have moved over, which is all I needed. Come join us!.

Didn't mean to write a whole essay, but got on a roll. Started by responding to this NYT op-ed: Good, but it was missing a technical understanding of why models are like this – namely, RLHF. Humans want approval and rate complimentary responses better.

I've been trying to articulate why the fawning, complimentary responses from AI chatbots feel so insidious to me. I've figured out how to explain it. Wrote a piece on how current model training and design choices threaten our critical thinking skills:.

Postponed until mid/late-April but will still do this at some point!.

Building a research aggregator with Steve on the ValTown livestream on Friday. Come hang out if you're free. 10am EST / 2pm GMT.

Posted some March updates to my now page: Normally shut down, baby is imminent, I've bought a giant pile of books, and I'm working on some new prototypes exploring critical thinking x language models.

RT @anselm_io: People often ask me what’s so special about Future of Coding London. “The people” is one obvious answer. “The demos” is wh….

RT @anselm_io: This is the announcement announcement. The next Future of Coding London. will be on Friday, February 28th (18:00). Register….

If you want to demo at the next event (in Feb / March), here's the signup link: Can be anything you like. The weirder the better.

Pleased to announce @anselm_io and @TodePond are taking over running the London Future of Coding meetup while I'm out on mat leave this year 🎉 . They've both been committed community members since the beginning and the perfect people to take over. Join the Luma calendar for.

A few months ago I started writing a short note about my experience of pregnancy so far… somehow turned into 6000+ words . I had a lot of thoughts on fruit babies, naturalness narratives, wild bananas, and the existential quality of growing someone new.

New creation in the works. Should be fully baked by March. Most impressive thing I’ve ever done without having any clue what I’m doing.

Solved! Sponsorship secured. (Though if you want to sponsor future ones, do get in touch).

I'm still actively looking for sponsors for this edition. If you work for a company that wants to present to a willing audience of creative developers (mix of web, backend, ML) – get in touch!.Costs £400-500 and you get a 15-20min demo slot to say anything you like.

Just put up the next London Future of Coding meetup: Friday, November 22nd at @nwspk . Festive edition! 🎄 Doing a pub quiz on computing history instead of our usual demos. Come for silly games, mince pies, and obscure programming references.

RT @joshm: We're building a second browser @browsercompany

RT @localfirstfm: Episode #16 is out. Anselm Eickhoff (@anselm_io) on building Jazz and embracing a local-first web. .

Losing a hyper-social place to put crappy, half-baked sketches and ideas, and get real reactions to them, is one of the larger losses at stake. Idea-development space requires more than a Twitter-shaped platform. Also needs a lively culture of generous replies, yes-and-ing, and

RSS isn't dead. Following single sites still works. But community distribution and curation feel like the missing pieces here. Hard not to blame it all on the downfall of the Twitter algorithm. I'm trying to post on Bluesky more (, but it's still quiet.

We're in a weird limbo shift without the right cultural infrastructure to encourage, support, distribute, and curate good quality personal writing and research. If people are writing thoughtful, quality things on personal sites or gardens, I don't know how we'd ever find them.