Thomas Arnold

This is snake-handling 101. The snake-handlers believe snakes can be deadly. But they also need you to be in awe of their faithful handling, to confer authority upon them as the special, spiritually gifted guarantors of Snake Safety/Governance. Fear, fascination, and protection reinforce each other.

It is something of a truism these days that the world is on fire. The necessary and sufficient conditions for ekpyrosis, however, have been somewhat muddled in the flaming shards of secondary literature still legible. The so-called "austere incineration" view *disappears into a crevasse*

A future where humans live alongside robots is closer than ever, according to computer scientists studying AI. And these Boston-area scientists say the technology that enables those machines doesn't require data centers.

"I can't tell if this is extreme, extreme pettiness, or terrorism." Darius, Atlanta S4E2 (and yeah, gotta read the replies)

Join us today (10/19) at 5 pm to hear Lin Fisher (Brown University), discuss his latest book Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in US History.

In an ideal world no one would be offering an opinion on AI animacy and consciousness without first having to watch the Heider-Simmel video from the 1940's.

Visiting Artist and CHAT fellow for University Ecologies, Mary Mattingly, was featured in the Tufts Daily! Read more here: www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2026...

A huge amount of pre-registration (BrIan Cantwell Smith) goes into assuming LLM's model human cognition, especially with moral reasoning.

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.

Among this paper's many contributions, for someone working in ethics, is an indirect illustration of the psychological error behind the "bitter lesson" quest for preference "alignment" through ever more compute and behavioral data.

Reading "Foucault in California" and still trying to accept that, after a lecture at Claremont in 1975, the night after he trips balls in Death Valley with host Simeon Wade and his partner, Foucault is met by...Al Franken, who asks him "Who do you think will win the World Series?"

If one substitutes "people whom they consider odd or exotic are in pain" for "something is made with AI" one faces how excruciating certain knowing would be (ghost workers and women in my field hurt, do I want to know more?), what theaters of intellectual sophistication might help me not have to do.

LinkedIn posts as grimoire

How do governments rewire science & the tech industry by threatening scholars? And how can we be more resilient? Writing for @ucs.org, I report on efforts by @thecoalition.bsky.social, @knightcolumbia.org, @acm.org, & @aoir.bsky.social to support researcher rights blog.ucs.org/guest-commen...

🌿🍄🌿 Finally went into the office + picked up my copy of Thinking With Plants + Fungi (and some other books). What a beautiful, colorful, joyful celebration of nature, history + science. Order your own copy + read my article on moss below (or on Amazon). 🌿🍄🌿 www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

Nevins Library, Methuen MA One of many North Shore library gems.

And "responsible use" brings more refusal problems with it-- when does a system allow for refusal within an interaction? Where is real-time consent, safety shut-offs, silence, not "guardrails" but exits from the road of sycophancy before it's too late to turn around? dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Looking forward to speaking with Christian Miller about honesty, AI, and virtue in a "This is fine" fire age. DM me for host promocode, still have some remaining. #philsky interintellect.com/salons/the-h...

Brown just opened a cluster hire for two tenure-track positions in Education Policy. Come join our vibrant community of scholars at @brownedudept.bsky.social & @annenberginstitute.bsky.social! apply.interfolio.com/190527 Please help spread the word.

The recommendation of Sara Teasdale now seems unrealistic because of its restraint, rather than-- as it did in high school-- the breadth of the machine's poetic references.

Looking forward to speaking with Christian Miller about honesty, AI, and virtue in a "This is fine" fire age. DM me for host promocode, still have some remaining. #philsky interintellect.com/salons/the-h...

The Coen Brothers have already done the Odyssey, it's time to let them plumb Minnesota darkness with Berryman's Dream Songs.

Really disappointed not to see @jgcarpenter.com quoted or cited here- sure seemed like she broke at least half this story on here almost 2 weeks ago

It took 9 years, but it seems this @tcarmody.bsky.social theory has manifested. kottke.org/17/12/lebron...

One of the many small details in @karenhao.bsky.social's Empire of AI that has stayed with me, amid many more gruesome others, is how OpenAI took the term "red-teaming" from cybersecurity without any adherence to its criteria and standards-- it just sounded cool, adversarial, accountability-coded.

Showing Morass sums up so much of AI vibe-metaphysics

I started writing a joke about the Odyssey in translation but then I saw on my screen "Chapman's Homer Beat Yanks 5/4" so I stole a better writer's joke.

Join us for this conversation (DM me for host promocode). This got me to look back at More's Utopia, where I realized Sebald's "Austerlitz" might be riffing off it-- both start with meeting a mysterious man in Antwerp, who unveils truths from colonial exploration. interintellect.com/salons/nowhe...

As a robotics researcher, learning scientist, and author who has followed Realbotix for years, I'm compelled to do a Bluesky thread on this whole pivot that Realbotix is now trying, turning from humanoid sex robots to classroom "education" robots. Buckle up. nysfocus.com/2026/07/14/n... 🧵

Come on, join me in avoiding writing. #philsky

Might be time for a Rorty reboot geared to AI, how the linguistic turn can serve a second-order "representation" and mirroring fantasy. Or a reboot of Wittgenstein, who would have vomited at the idea of LLM's vindicating anything from him other than his ear for Brahms.

Enjoying this book and looking forward to the discussion interintellect.com/salons/nowhe...

If you're an anthropologist of science/tech in the Boston area and want to teach an intro-level class at Tufts on the same this fall, well you're in luck: apply.interfolio.com/188534

A very short intro for Theology and Science, submitted with impeccable timing a few days before the papal encyclical's release. On AI ethics, Moloch, Greek tragedy, and care. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Prompt engineering, via Philip K. Dick's "The Penultimate Truth" (1964).

* Arendt, Irigiray

I loved talking to @npr.org's Meghna Chakrabarti for On Point this summer. They re-aired the interview this weekend if you're curious to give it a listen! Link in comments.

Excellent new work out from my lab exemplifying how philosophy, cognitive science, and computer science must put their resources together in order to make headway on characterizing the capabilities of AI systems, especially when those capabilities are in a mentalistic idiom.

It was a pleasure to host yesterday's @interintellect.bsky.social salon with @carissaveliz.bsky.social. The book is superb, an exemplary work of what we sweet summer children used to call a public intellectual.

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...

How about some 20 minute Tiny Desk lectures on politics and History

in the u.s., print and ebook: bookshop.org/p/books/the-... in canada from arsenal direct arsenalpulp.com/Books/T/The-.... and the week we hit the bestsellars: lithub.com/the-independ...

We are nearing capacity and the event date, and in addition to zeugma I have some free codes to offer. DM me in interested.

As tech companies have started blaming science fiction for their AI's shambolatry, it's time to face up to Melville's culpability for the Canvas hack.