Thomas Arnold

@thomasarnold.bsky.social

679 Followers 630 Following

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

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.
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'."
Young Charles Sanders Peirce, the Metaphysical Club's Anton Chigurh
The cover of Mary Daly's "Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy," green with a symmetrically serpentine illustration by Emily Culpepper.
The faces of Cronos, Zeus, and descendant divinities, all blondish, fair, almost all blue-eyed.
Carol from Pluribus getting the Heisman/ostrakon over voicemail
Map of Somerville divided into 21 "coffeehoods," each named after coffee shop in that area. Massive debates to ensue, but I like "Tamper Hillside."
The Nightwalker coming for its head in “Princess Mononoke”
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.
I mean you have to admit Hot Priest and Fleabag would be good expositors of perfection and eros, if not actual Murdoch novel characters.
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.
Red-figure Greek vase depicting Scythian influenced Amazon holding bow and drawing arrow, by Epiktetos, 520-510 BCE, via British Museum, London
Picture of David Frost and Richard Nixon shaking hands. 2025 gives us ConnorEatsPants and Elon/Adrian Musk.
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.”
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.
Louise Bourgeois painting headed by text "To unravel torment you must begin somewhere"
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.
Adam Mansbach children’s book “Go the Fuck to Sleep”
Frontal and side photos taken of Antonio Gramsci upon his being put in the prison at Turi.
Picture of Freud's statue at Clark University in 2020, wearing a mask. A plague-bearer during a plague.
Picture of abandoned teddy bear lying on the floor.
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.
Picture of Joanne McNeil’s novel “Wrong Way”
S'more featuring a marshmallow with likeness of Sir Thomas More burned onto it.
Mural of Steph Curry reading to children
Mural on 19th and Broadway, a young person with night herons and a colorful halo. By Joshua Mays
Goofy-looking Merman from He-Man.
Tweet from April 28 saying "whale discourse woefully lacking" on Bluesky