Bbenzon
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. Intellectually, I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
MY BLOGS
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New Savanna
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 6820 )
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John Coltrane Plays Greensleeves
The tune is old. From Wikipedia: "Greensleeves" is a traditional English folk song. A broadside ballad by the name "A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude 3.5 Sonnet Describes a Scene Inside the Malibu Diner
Notice Claude’s reaction when I ask it to describe the couple seated at the left. As you know, Claude is produced by Anthropic, and Anthropic is very “safety”... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Little Papal Humor
Pope Francis, Pope Francis: There Is Faith in Humor, NYTimes, 12.17.24. By this time the article is humming along nicely, His Holiness has gotten some good... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Teaching Kids How to Make Their Own Little Language Models
Scott J Mulligan, Kids are learning how to make their own little language models, MIT Technology Review, October 25, 2024. “This new AI technology—it’s very... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Amazon Unsafe for Workers?
Noam Scheiber, Amazon Disregarded Internal Warnings on Injuries, Senate Investigation Claims, NYTimes, Dec. 16, 2024. Internal company documents collected by Mr. Read more
Posted on 16 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude 3.5 Sonnet Describes a Night Scene Obscured by Intentional Camera Movement
This obviously is not an ordinary photograph. It’s taken at night. I zoomed the lens during a long exposure, a technique known as intentional camera movement... Read more
Posted on 16 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Nobody Wants This [Media Notes 148]
I watched the first three episodes of Nobody Wants This in a single sitting. Loved it. I eagerly anticipated watching the other seven episodes. Which I did... Read more
Posted on 16 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude 3.5 Sonnet Describes a Photo of Boats and Ships on the Hudson River
Describe this image. This is a beautiful maritime scene on San Francisco Bay, with the Golden Gate Bridge visible in the background spanning across the frame.... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Loss of Plasticity in Deep Continual Learning
Dohare, S., Hernandez-Garcia, J.F., Lan, Q. et al. Loss of plasticity in deep continual learning. Nature 632, 768–774 (2024). https://doi.org/10. Read more
Posted on 15 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The World is Gifted, Peter Apfelbaum and the Hieroglyphics Ensemble
Thus cut has given me endless satisfaction for two decades. Peter Apfelbaum : tenor and soprano saxophones,piano,keyboards,snare... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What’s the Difference Between Life Coaching and Therapy? [Claude]
Once I began thinking about depression and its amelioration, I began thinking about therapy, but also life coaching. Why life coaching? Because it strikes me... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude 3.5 Sonnet Recognizes the Empire State Building and Connects It with...
I had a specific reason for asking Claude to describe the picture below, which is dominated by the Empire State Building. Earlier I had asked it to describe a... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ilya Sutskever: "Sequence to Sequence Learning with Neural Networks: What a...
From the YouTube page: Ilya Sutskever full talk "Sequence to sequence learning with neural networks: what a decade" at NeurIPS 2024 in Vancouver, Canada. Read more
Posted on 14 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Depression and Grief [Claude]
I think that understanding the relationship between depression and grief is particularly important for my current investigation of depression – which, BTW, I... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mary Jo Salter on Poetry – Pay Attention! [“make It New”]
Aleyna Rentz interviews Mary Jo Salter in the Johns Hopkins Magazine. Salter is emirata from the JHU Writing Seminars and is editor of The Best American Poetry... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Sticky [Media Notes 147]
I loved this series, a taught six episodes, one of the best I’ve seen. Here’s Wikipedia’s succinct characterization: The Sticky is a 2024 dark comedy... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Vegie Land
Posted on 13 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computer Chess, Super-intelligence, A Connecticut Yankee, Cargo Cults
I just had an interesting interaction with Claude 3.5 Sonnet. As always, my remarks are boldface while Claude's are plain. * * * * * I believe that neural-net... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fred the Heretic Goes Epic with Elon
FTH (aka Fred the Heretic), as you may recall, is a GPT based on the poetry of Frederick Turner. While I’ve already posted a few poems by FTH, I haven’t posted... Read more
Posted on 12 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
After That We Need Some Organic Relief
Posted on 12 December 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY