Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Reminds me of my favourite M6 bridge graffiti. “Hit the North? It’d be quicker to get out and walk.” 000
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 27/09/2026The strange and damaged paths of unloved children www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/m...nytimes.comSylvester Stallone Hid His Struggles for Decades. Now He’s Coming Clean. (Gift Article)The legendary actor on his disturbing childhood, his Hollywood missteps and the pain he caused to his loved ones, his body and himself. 021
Reposted by Adrian MonckSocial Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 26/09/2026"So much for free speech. The studio releasing Alex Gibney’s new Elon Musk documentary Musk is finding itself unable to buy an ad on the biggest social platforms." www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...hollywoodreporter.comThe Major Social Media Platforms Are All Rejecting Paid Ads for Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’ (Exclusive)YouTube, TikTok and Meta have all turned down the trailer for the Oct. 9 doc, citing "political" content. X won't even take Bleecker Street's calls. The distributor is appealing. 56532
Reposted by Adrian MonckLuke Ontario @coolhand.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Oh my God, I agree with WSJ opinion Oh my God, shoot me in the face 371506303
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Who decides when AI is safe enough? open.substack.com/pub/7thing/p...open.substack.comWho decides when AI is safe enough?Pacing or racing? A species that can live with acid oceans and soaring temperatures can probably live with LLM safety risks. 000
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 10/09/2026You too may want to respond to questions about winning an Oscar. 020
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 26/08/2026The People’s Liberation Payments open.substack.com/pub/7thing/p...open.substack.comThe ChoiceThe People’s Liberation Payments: China’s fear of welfare. 000
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026Big robotics breakthrough claim generalistai.com/blog/gen-1.5generalistai.comGEN-1.5: Embodied Foundation Models are One-Shot Learners - Generalist AIGEN-1.5 can in-context learn a new task from as little as 3 to 12 seconds of demonstration data — or adapt with 1 to 10 gradient steps on minutes of data. These capabilities emerge from pretraining on... 010
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 18/08/2026No fan of the apple pie and eagle scout stuff but this stuck out: “Down the hall, the president signed an executive order banning me from restrooms in all federal buildings. I would start to plan policy meetings around bathroom stops across Pennsylvania Avenue.” www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...theatlantic.comThe Wrong Kind of AmericanThe Trump White House needed me—until the fact that I am trans became public. 010
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 14/08/2026In case you want something to read this weekend open.substack.com/pub/7thing/p...open.substack.comThe Cave and the MachineWhat Chauvet’s rock paintings and Pāṇini’s chanted grammar say about handing over thought, work and deed to AI. 000
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 13/08/2026Anything human, we must remind ourselves, is kept by being re-enacted and repeated. And we are the sums of our redundant rituals being optimised out of our machines. > my latest 7thin.gs/p/ai-deskill...7thin.gsThe Cave and the MachineWhat Chauvet’s rock paintings and Pāṇini’s chanted grammar say about handing over thought, work and action to AI. 000
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 08/08/2026Thetford is itself entirely immigrant – a Cockney exclave in Norfolk. 040
Reposted by Adrian MonckThe Onion @theonion.com · 17/07/2026U.S. Military To Test Troops’ Testosterone Levels theonion.com/u-s-military-to-test-t… 2195196
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026from “Walks in the Wheatfields” by Richard Jeffries, 1887 000
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026This is human life, real human life—no rest, no calm enjoyment of the scene, no generous gift of food and wine lavishly offered by the gods—the hard fist of necessity for ever battering man to a shapeless and hopeless fall. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026Here was the wheat, the beauty of which I strive in vain to tell you, in the midst of the flowery summer, scourging them with the knot of necessity; that which should give life pulling the life out of them, rendering their existence below that of the cattle, so far as the pleasure of living goes. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026So hard, you see, is the pressure of human life that these miserables would have prayed on their knees for permission to tear their arms from the socket, and to scorch and shrivel themselves to charred human brands in the furnace of the sun. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026No song, no laugh, no stay—on from morn till night, possessed with a maddened desire to labour, for the more they could cut the larger the sum they would receive; and what is man's heart and brain to money? 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026So they worked and slaved, and tore at the wheat as if they were seized with a frenzy; the heat, the aches, the illness, the sunstroke, always impending in the air—the stomach hungry again before the meal was over, it was nothing. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026Never was such work. The wages were low in those days, like solid gold to men and women who had lived on dry bones through the winter. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026They grew visibly thinner in the harvest-field, and shrunk together—all flesh disappearing, and nothing but sinew and muscle remaining. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026Their necks grew black, much like black oak in old houses, and their arms, tough as ash, seemed cased in leather. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026The edge of the reap-hook had to be driven by force through the stout stalks like a sword, blow after blow, minute after minute, hour after hour; the back stooping, and the broad sun throwing his fiery rays from a full disc on the head and neck. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026Your skin or mine could not have stood the scratching of the straw, which is stiff and sharp, and the burning of the sun, which blisters like red-hot iron. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026More men and more men were put on day by day, and women to bind the sheaves, till the vast field held the village, yet they seemed but a handful buried in the tunnels of the golden mine: they were lost in it like the hares, for as the wheat fell, the shocks rose behind them, low tents of corn. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026Next day the village sent forth its army with their crooked weapons to cut and slay. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026There was no bulletin to tell the folk of its progress … No one knew the day—the last day of doom of the golden race; every one knew it was nigh. One evening there was a small square piece cut at one side, a little notch, and two shocks stood there in the twilight. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026The great field you see was filled with gold corn four feet deep as a pitcher is filled with water to the brim. The sunbeams sank deeper and deeper into the wheatears, layer upon layer of light, and the colour deepened by these daily strokes. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026Let your hand touch the ears lightly as you walk—drawn through them as if over the side of a boat in water—feeling the golden heads. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026It seemed a triumph of culture over such a space, such regularity, such perfection of myriads of plants springing in their true lines at the same time, each particular ear perfect, and a mile of it. Perfect work with the plough, the drill, the harrow in every detail, and yet such breadth. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026The path ran for a mile beside it—a mile of wheat in one piece—all those million million stalks the same height, all with about the same number of grains in each car, all ripening together. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026There was another wheat-field by the side of which I used to walk sometimes in the evenings, as the grains in the cars began to grow firm. 110
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 27/07/2026My review of The Odyssey. Like Michael Bay directed The Trip. 100
Adrian Monck @amonck.bsky.social · 23/07/2026Inside China’s AI World: The DeepSeek Transcript open.substack.com/pub/7thing/p...open.substack.comInside China’s AI World: The DeepSeek TranscriptFour hours of Liang Wenfeng on Nvidia, Huawei and the compute gap. 010
