Bbenzon
Description
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 ( 7460 )
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Readership for Tech Media is WAY DOWN
No discussion of tech media can get past this basic traffic fact: in the AI world, Google and social no longer refer traffic, which means that the vast... Read more
Posted on 04 March 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The River: Across, Up, and Back
Posted on 04 March 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The Chinese Are Optimistic About AI, No Doomers
Vivian Wang, Where are China’s A.I. Doomers? NYTimes, Mar. 4, 2026. People in China are among the most excited in the world about A.I., according to a KPMG... Read more
Posted on 04 March 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
OJ and Waffle
Posted on 03 March 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The Pentagon's Position on Anthropic is Legally Hopeless
Michael Endrias and Alan Z. Rozenshtein have a substantial article about the Anthropic mess: Pentagon’s Anthropic Designation Won’t Survive First Contact with... Read more
Posted on 03 March 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Shipyard
David Gallagher, The Exact Shade of Gray; THE SHIPYARD. By Juan Carlos Onetti. The New York Times, June 16, 1968. Read more
Posted on 03 March 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
An Unexpected Consequence of Doomer Propaganda: The Pentagon Wants to Control th...
Casey Mock, Pete Hegseth Got His Happy Meal, Tomorrow's Mess, March 2, 2026. Concerning the current dust-up between the Pentagon and Anthropic: Something like... Read more
Posted on 03 March 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fun in the Snow
Posted on 02 March 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Pulling Things Together About Creativity & LLMs
Consider these recent posts about AI: Two Ways to Use AI: Homo Economicus vs. Homo Ludens (2.27.26) Chatbots have increased my sense of intellectual agency... Read more
Posted on 02 March 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ellie Pavlick, (How) Does AI Think?
c. 40:16 “At various points I’ve like argued really what we’re seeing here is a neural implementation of what is latently a symbolic system like our symbolic... Read more
Posted on 02 March 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Trump Ban Sends Claude to #1
AI Secret, Mar. 2, 2026. đ What’s happening: After Anthropic’s talks with the US Department of Defense collapsed over military AI... Read more
Posted on 02 March 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Something Interesting to Look at on Sunday Morning
Posted on 01 March 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Words, Code, Guardrails & Weasels: OpenAI, Anthropic, and the Pentagon
I work in government affairs at OpenAI.My job is federal partnerships. When an agency wants our models, I make sure the paperwork is beautiful. Paperwork is my... Read more
Posted on 01 March 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why Gemini 3.1 is So Good [long Chains of Reasoning, Across Disciplinary...
YouTube: What's really happening when Google ships the smartest AI model on the planet, prices it at a seventh of the competition, and doesn't care if you keep... Read more
Posted on 01 March 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Carving at the Joints: Plato, Zhuangzi, Guo Xiang
First, a prompt I gave Claude 5.4. Then Claude’s reply. * * * * * There’s a cliché about carving Nature at its joints. There’s one version from Plato’s Phaedrus. Read more
Posted on 01 March 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Elysian Park, Hoboken
Posted on 28 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Computation, Chess, and Language in Artificial Intelligence
New working paper. Title above, links, abstract, contents and introduction below: Academia.edu:... Read more
Posted on 28 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two Ways to Use AI: Homo Economicus Vs. Homo Ludens
The academy has a problem, and it's been getting worse for over a century.[1] We organize knowledge into disciplines—history, psychology, neuroscience,... Read more
Posted on 27 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: An Urban Canyon in Hoboken, NJ
Posted on 27 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Down by the River [Hoboken, Hudson River]
Posted on 26 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
