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Thomas Arnold

@thomasarnold.bsky.social
712 followers 669 following 484 posts

HRI, AI, religious studies, pragmatism | ethics-sullying at Tufts Institute for AI | he/him | current pencil: Tombow 2558 H | end theory: low | realism: visceral thomasarnold.scholar.st

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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Chaplin's "Modern Times," understanding in 1936 that workplace surveillance would not look kindly upon private bathroom breaks. What it underplayed was how vulnerable bosses would feel if they were exposed to worker perception via a big screen.
Charlie Chaplin playing a worker whose boss glowers at him from a big screen installed on the bathroom's wall.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Nevins Library, Methuen MA One of many North Shore library gems.
Arched ceiling and stained glass of Nevins Library reading room, along with second-level wood-paneled study cartels.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Come on, join me in avoiding writing. #philsky
A five panel sequence from John Oliver on General Hospital, showing him interrupted, slapped and stunned by a character. My text is Wittgenstein commenting on logical form then getting slapped by Piero Sraffa à la his famous Sicilian gesture for which he asked W for logical form.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
Prompt engineering, via Philip K. Dick's "The Penultimate Truth" (1964).
At the keyboard of the rhetorizor he typed, carefully, the substantive he wanted. 'Squirrel.' Then, after a good two minutes of sluggish, deep thought, the limiting adjective 'smart'.""Dear," Colleen said, and sighed. "I heard you type out only two semantic units. Give it more to ogpon."
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
But, on rarer occasions at Fortune's whim, you will face "What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss?"
Young Charles Sanders Peirce, the Metaphysical Club's Anton Chigurh
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
The theological arachnics she would have unleashed on the name, message, and prophesying of Anthropic appearing at a joint press conference about a papal encyclical... My Adam Curtis doc would note she passed away in 2010, the year of the first ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge...
The cover of Mary Daly's "Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy," green with a symmetrically serpentine illustration by Emily Culpepper.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Lovely book in some ways but the d'Aulaires really drew the Greek pantheon like this
The faces of Cronos, Zeus, and descendant divinities, all blondish, fair, almost all blue-eyed.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 27/12/2025
"Hi Carol. Our feelings for you poets haven't changed, the republic just needs a little space." #philsky
Carol from Pluribus getting the Heisman/ostrakon over voicemail
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
This is Boston coffee nerd excellence
Map of Somerville divided into 21 "coffeehoods," each named after coffee shop in that area. Massive debates to ensue, but I like "Tamper Hillside."
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
The Nightwalker coming for its head in “Princess Mononoke”
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Tag yourself in the AI slop how-to, I'm the scissors.
AI-generated how-to of an origami dachsund. Goes from impossibly folded diamond shape to fully folded dog repeated five times, with one step just being a picture of a pair of scissors. The steps are helpfully numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 again, 9, and 4 one more time, and 7. Ample evidence for why Sam Altman should be able to use everyone's art for perpetuity to produce comic post material.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
Joaquin Phoenix could do young and old William James, portray credible nitrous oxide hits and spirit readings, and nail "Damn the absolute!" in a #PhilosophyBiopics
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Iris Murdoch
I mean you have to admit Hot Priest and Fleabag would be good expositors of perfection and eros, if not actual Murdoch novel characters.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Finally found my banner
A revised photo that read ERRATA, In General the Whole Account, In particular, each and every post. This will be, or should be, taken down soon in accord with its message.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
post an Archer
Red-figure Greek vase depicting Scythian influenced Amazon holding bow and drawing arrow, by Epiktetos, 520-510 BCE, via British Museum, London
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
Picture of David Frost and Richard Nixon shaking hands. 2025 gives us ConnorEatsPants and Elon/Adrian Musk.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 23/09/2024
From Andrew Marantz’s “Anti-Social,” asking a question to Emerson Spartz.
I asked him to name the most beautiful book he’d ever read. “Can you rephrase that question more clearly?” he asked. I couldn’t. 
“A beautiful book?” he said. “I don’t even know what that means. Impactful, sure.”
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 23/09/2024
The Target “men’s soap” aisle is always good for a laugh and a complete AmStud/social theory midterm prompt printed on a label.
Soap wrapper of Duke Cannon’s “Big American Bourbon soap”, with “oak barrel scent” and actual “Buffalo Trace” Kentucky bourbon, when you need to take the edge off your racial and gender panic while you shower. A portion of proceeds go to veterans, presumably even to ones who were captured.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 07/09/2024
My fall anthem
Louise Bourgeois painting headed by text "To unravel torment you must begin somewhere"
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 01/09/2024
The people whose lives I consider diminished are those who've read Vance and not any May Sarton.
Passage from "Journal of a Solitude":
The fact that a middle-aged, single woman, without any vestige of family left, lives in this house in a silent village and is responsible only to her own soul means something. The fact that she is a writer and can tell where she is and what it is like on the pilgrimage inward can be of comfort. It is comforting to know there are lighthouse keepers on rocky islands along the coast. Sometimes, when I have been for a walk after dark and see my house lighted up, looking so alive, I feel that my presence here is worth all the Hell.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 14/08/2024
From “Do androids dream of electric sheep?” to “Hey cars…
Adam Mansbach children’s book “Go the Fuck to Sleep”
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 28/03/2024
"Intellectual life used to be fun"
Frontal and side photos taken of Antonio Gramsci upon his being put in the prison at Turi.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 27/02/2024
Finally this photo of mine from 2020 has its caption.
Picture of Freud's statue at Clark University in 2020, wearing a mask.  A plague-bearer during a plague.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 06/02/2024
My nine Bluesky invitations
Picture of abandoned teddy bear lying on the floor.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 02/02/2024
Speaking to HRI seminar tomorrow and I have some classical slides ready for a change of pace (e.g. Medea as Euripides' mechane-lifted protagonist vs. Ava lifted up in the film Ex Machina; here, an Iliad scene echoed by the Cruise robotaxi dragging a woman 20 feet down the street) 🏺 Classics Bluesky
Picture of a Attic Black-figure vase showing Achilles dragging Hector's body behind his chariot, with Iris urging him to ransom Hector's corpse.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 25/12/2023
Jolabokaflod book for tonight, new one from @jomc.bsky.social
Picture of Joanne McNeil’s novel “Wrong Way”
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 02/11/2023
Artist Angela Lorenz produced the "Sir Thomas'more angelonium.com
S'more featuring a marshmallow with likeness of Sir Thomas More burned onto it.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 31/10/2023
Steampunk Pragmatist
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 03/09/2023
Mural of Steph Curry reading to childrenMural titled “Justice for my Ancestors”
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 02/09/2023
One of Oakland’s many phenomenal murals (by Joshua Mays)
Mural on 19th and Broadway, a young person with night herons and a colorful halo. By Joshua Mays
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 28/08/2023
Cursed image when reading "Fear and Trembling."
Goofy-looking Merman from He-Man.
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 21/05/2023
And Bluesky said, "Children, have you no whales? Cast your nets to the side of the stuck boat, near the orcas, and ye shall find them."
Tweet from April 28 saying "whale discourse woefully lacking" on Bluesky
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 18/04/2023
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Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 16/04/2023
Wheaton College (Norton, MA)
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