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Adrian Toll

@adriantoll.bsky.social
276 followers 14 following 165 posts

Flâneur manqué. Variously: Creator @gilbertwhite.bsky.social and @johnclare.bsky.social Tech @ www.thebureaulondon.com Tea boy @ www.arantzavilas.com Neuroscience @ www.ucl.ac.uk Sculpture @ www.arts.ac.uk Psychology @ www.ed.ac.uk

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Reposted by Adrian Toll
Howard Mittelmark @howardm.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I am the Lorax, I speak for the data centers.
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I note that he didn't rule out replacing the water in the English Channel with brie either.
theguardian.com
Andy Burnham does not rule out Brexit reversal being in next Labour manifesto
PM says immediate focus is on rebuilding bridges with EU as he prepares for first meeting with Ursula von der Leyen
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Reposted by Adrian Toll
Gilbert White @gilbertwhite.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
1777: The sky this evening, being what they call a mackerel sky, was most beautiful, & much admired in many parts of the country. Italian skies! As the beautiful mackerel-sky was remarked & admired at Ringmer near Lewes, London, & Selborne at the same time; it is a plain proof that those fleecy...
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
The New Yorker article that's the inspiration for the Coyote vs. Acme film. "Mr. Coyote seeks compensation for personal injuries, loss of business income, and mental suffering caused as a direct result of the actions and/or gross negligence of said company..."
newyorker.com
Coyote V. Acme
From 1990: “Much as he has come to mistrust Defendant’s products, Mr. Coyote has no other domestic source of supply to which to turn.”
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Reposted by Adrian Toll
Gilbert White @gilbertwhite.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
1777: Fern-owls haunts Mrs. Snooke's orchard in the autumn.
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Reposted by Adrian Toll
Iceland Cricket @icelandcricket.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
We need more talented cricketers in Iceland. If you can play a bit and have an Icelandic grandparent or fifth cousin, get in touch. If you have even watched some films by Baltasar Kormákur, we will think about it.
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
This reminds me of an interview with Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys who said something along the lines of him being very disappointed by the lack of music about the war in Ukraine. It made me reflect that through something like Top of the Pops you could speak to a huge number of people.
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
'Greenland Energy has retained Phil McGraw, better known as Dr Phil, a prominent rightwing former chatshow host who served on Trump’s religious freedom commission, to make a documentary series that will “capture the mission of these modern-day wildcatters”.' What a weird timeline.
theguardian.com
Greenland issues ‘strong warning’ as Trump-linked oil firm prepares to drill
Island’s government says no approval given after Greenland Energy brings kit ashore for exploratory drilling
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Insane stuff from the Green Party: "roofs before rural". It should be be roofs *and* rural to rapidly decarbonise. We can't be prissy about this, and there are ways to reduce its impact on nature, like raising the panels and letting things grow underneath. Much more nature-friendly than monoculture.
ft.com
The one climate issue uniting Greens and Reform in Kent
Insurgent parties of left and right find common cause in stance over major solar farm scheme but UK government will have final say
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Have to admit I got a bit of vertigo when a friend's son reacted to me having seen Nirvana at Reading Festival in the same way as I reacted a decade or so before to hearing my father-in-law had seen Hendrix at the Isle Of Wight festival.
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Reposted by Adrian Toll
Prof Katherine Schofield 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺 @katherineschof8.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
This is hands down the best opinion piece you will read on the Arday case. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
The takedown of Jason Arday has overjoyed the right, and must be a wake-up call for the left | Jason Okundaye
The Cambridge academic has rightly now resigned. But that won’t end the targeting of senior black figures or the lazy way institutions promote faux equality, says Guardian columnist Jason Okundaye
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
I've loved anachronistic adaptations ever since reading Christopher Logue's modernist retelling of the Iliad, War Music, where there are phrases like "the camera pans across the shining armies". Haven't seen The Odyssey, and Logue sounds more subtle, but when done well it can really work.
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
When you forget to remove the AI prompt from your speech.
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Reposted by Adrian Toll
John Clare @johnclare.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
1825: Still uncommonly Hot.
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Reposted by Adrian Toll
Gavin Jackson @gavinjackson.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
The rollout of high speed internet in Uruguay worsended early childhood development. But not because the kids spent too much time in front of screens, because the parents did. cepr.org/voxeu/column...
cepr.org
High-speed internet and early childhood development: Causal evidence from a countrywide programme
The rapid expansion of high-speed internet has intensified concerns about how digital technologies affect early childhood. Using the staggered rollout of fibre optic to the home in Uruguay as a natura...
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Want to have your entire user directory uploaded to Elon Musk's AI servers without your knowledge? Use grok! xcancel.com/a_green_bein...
A tweet from an xAI user saying "Okay, grok has uploaded my entire user directory to xAI's servers. It contains my SSH keys, my password manager database, my documents, photos, videos, everything..." with a screenshot of some items that were uploaded.
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
I would be very interested in a comparative study of percentages for stutter penalties scored vs all other approaches. I have a hunch the stutter penalties are marginally worse, but some are scored, and some hoofed penalties aren't. Given the amount of data in football now it must have been done.
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Bit of a joke that the only yellow Paraguay got was Galaza after the whistle for arguing with the ref. He should have had quite a few during the game, but the final straw seems to be the ref's ego.
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Meta taking creepy to a whole other level - using your profile picture to target adverts (for the perv glasses) to your partner without your consent. One for the @katie0martin.ft.com archive...
Screenshot of a tweet, "The era of ultra-personalized ads has begun" containing another screenshot of an Instagram post asking "Why the hell Is Instagram using AI ads AND USING MY PROFILE PICTURE to direct the ad to my boyfriend??????? I'm uncomfortable" with the screenshot of the ad.
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Labour backstory: Dad was a Bevin Boy Tory backstory: Mum was a deb at Buckingham Palace Whig backstory: Dad's family were Plymouth Brethren Republican backstory: I share a birthday with Tom Selleck
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
I honestly think this is part of the reason for Liverpool's dreadful season. It's not like people forgot about Jota's death, but I think it must really have eaten away at his teammates in a way that's difficult to understand from the outside.
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
"We must continue publishing op eds in Der Stürmer so we can reach disenfranchised fascists."
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
I cannot wrap my head around how *credulous* people are when conversing with AI. "There is a certain irony in the fact that beyond human hunches AI itself is the most efficient tool we have for revealing what is AI generated." It just generated a plausible-sounding statement and you believed it!
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Reposted by Adrian Toll
Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Recently, FamilySearch digitized and uploaded tons of microfilmed records, including many from 18th-century Massachsuetts. They're using some sort of AI to transcribe/summarize the handwritten documents. I've noticed that the AI strips out references to race and enslavement in 18thc documents.
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Why can't I get a men's Pyrex bowl any more? Woke gone mad.
An image of a bowl with "Pyrex Unisex Classic Mixing Bowl" as the title
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Love this shot / chaser from Todd Rundgren's Wikipedia page.
2018: Nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's class of 2019. Since becoming eligible in 1995, he has often been asked about his absence from the Hall of Fame. A 2018 poll conducted by the institution, which is not factored in the final vote, placed Rundgren as the third-most deserving nominee on the ballot. In 2016, Rundgren told an interviewer: "It doesn't have the same cachet as a Nobel Peace Prize or some historical foundation. If I told you about how they actually determine who gets into the Hall of Fame, you'd think that I was bullshitting you, because I've been told what's involved. ... It's just as corrupt as anything else, and that's why I don't care."

2021: Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
AI and "knitting bullshit". It would be great to think that this kind of slop will eventually die out as people realise how little care is put into it. katedaviesdesigns.com/2026/04/29/k...
I have been thinking about knitting bullshit now for quite some time, but I was alerted to a particular type of it while listening to Jamie Bartlett’s excellent series Everything is Fake and Nobody Cares (available wherever you get your podcasts). The first episode includes an interview with Anne McHealy, head of product at Inception Point AI, a podcasting company founded by Jeanine Wright, formerly COO at Wondery. Until its dissolution (by Amazon in 2025 at the cost of 110 jobs), Wondery was known for producing high quality, human-authored, narrative content. Inception Point AI, on the other hand, is a slop factory employing just 8 people which, according to Anne, publishes “about 3000 podcast episodes per week, hosted by AI personalities.” Anne tells Jamie, that, to date, Inception Point AI’s  podcasts have accumulated “12 million lifetime downloads. And we’re averaging about 750,000 downloads a month.” Stunned by these extraordinary figures, Jamie asks Anne about the editorial oversight of the content which she produces. Does she, or any of her colleagues, actually listen to any of these 3000 weekly episodes? With only 8 employees, who on earth has time to check the accuracy or quality of these podcasts? The answer, is, of course, that no one checks or edits the podcast content– but, Anne tells Jamie blithely, this really doesn’t matter because the topics under discussion are so low stakes:

“most of our content sits squarely in topics that aren’t life or death necessarily. So gardening, for example, knitting, cooking, these things we can afford to be wrong. And it’s not necessarily the end of the world.”
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
The Wikipedia entry of a famous mine-clearing rat, structured like that of a human, with "Early life", "Career" and "Retirement and death". Just missing "Alleged embezzlement of soft fruit".
en.wikipedia.org
Magawa - Wikipedia
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
Kind of funny in economic terms that "hard-working landlords" are literally rent-seeking.
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
This is the civilised way to solve contested sovereignty. "In 1984, Canadian soldiers visited the island and planted a Canadian flag, also leaving a bottle of Canadian whisky. The Danish Minister of Greenland Affairs came to the island himself later the same year...
en.wikipedia.org
Whisky War - Wikipedia
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Adrian Toll @adriantoll.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
"May not man himself become a sort of parasite upon the machines? An affectionate machine-tickling aphid?" Samuel Butler, Erewhon, 1872
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